


Revivere

by aeli_kindara



Series: Supernatural Codas [20]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon Divergent, Canon Universe, Case Fic, Castiel and Dean Winchester Being Idiots, Defeating Chuck, Enochian Magic (Supernatural), F/M, M/M, Magic, Mythology References, POV Sam Winchester, Pining, Post-Episode: s15e03 The Rupture, Ruler of Hell Rowena MacLeod, Sam Winchester's Visions, Wild Hunt, Witch Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:48:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24741049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeli_kindara/pseuds/aeli_kindara
Summary: Rowena is dead, Cas is gone, and Sam and Dean are learning how to live in the world they've saved.But the wound on Sam's shoulder still won't heal, and the visions it brings start showing him Cas — in mortal danger from a mysterious Enochian magic-user.When Dean goes to help him, Sam's left alone in the bunker with a head full of visions and a dead witch who keeps talking to him, if only when he doesn't ask her to.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Rowena MacLeod/Sam Winchester
Series: Supernatural Codas [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/877383
Comments: 123
Kudos: 235





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story diverges from canon post-15.03 — it'll share some themes but go in a very different story direction from canon. Expect it to come in around 15k plus an epilogue.
> 
> Many thanks to Natalie, Bea, and Remmy for all their help making this thing exist!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _After the hole in the earth closes up, Sam’s the one who ducks back into the crypt to gather up Rowena’s things._

After the hole in the earth closes up, Sam’s the one who ducks back into the crypt to gather up Rowena’s things.

You can’t leave the contents of a witch’s kit strewn around where high school kids come out to drink and scare themselves. It’s a recipe for the kind of mess Sam and his family will be called to fix. His family: just Dean, now. Dean and Cas.

The owl skull is blackened in its bowl. _Sanetur acre vulnus,_ Sam thinks. May the terrible wound be healed.

He gathers it all into Rowena’s bag. Her coat is still lying on the flagstones; he folds it, gently. He tucks it on top of the spellbooks and potion flasks and fastens the clasp.

He almost misses the little hex bag lying on the ground by the toe of his boot — Rowena’s last resurrection sachet. It was stained with blood when she pulled it from her shoulder; now, somehow, it’s clean.

Sam picks it up and tucks it in the pocket of his jeans. Then he goes to find his brother.

\---

Back in the bunker, it’s a mechanical round of tasks. They haven’t slept in forty hours and change. Sam showers away days’ worth of grime and sweat and blood. The wound in his shoulder is still throbbing; he soaps it gingerly. At the other end of the row of stalls, he can hear Dean moving around. The spray beating on the tiles.

When Sam gets back to his room, he pulls on jeans and a button-down with some vague idea of going to check on Cas, take some things out of the Impala maybe. But his bed beckons. He falls onto it without bothering to pull back the covers or turn off the lamp, hides his face in the pillow. He doesn’t wake up until morning.

\---

“We did it, though, man,” says Dean. “It’s over. God threw one last apocalypse at us, and we beat it.”

Sam looks up at the ceiling; closes his eyes. It doesn’t feel like they’ve won.

\---

Rowena’s bags are where he left them, nestled in the floorboards of the Impala’s backseat. Sam should spread their contents out on the library table, or in the storeroom — they have routines for the spoils of a hunt. A system for cataloguing magical artifacts. He takes them back to his bedroom instead.

It feels like he’s stepping into something holy, undoing the clasp. _I believe in prophecy, and I believe in magic._ He pulls Rowena’s coat out carefully and lays it on his bed.

What’s inside isn’t much more than he expects. Bowls and hex bags and a few vials and some books — he lays those by for later. The remains of the spell he’ll dispose of in the bunker’s incinerator; it’s no wiser to reuse old spell ingredients than it is to leave them lying around. The bowl he’ll cleanse with burning sage before storing it downstairs.

At the bottom of the bag are a few dried herbs, most of them in a sorry state of wear — spare ingredients tossed in hastily and forgotten. Sam draws them out, careful not to detach a straggling leaf, but he doesn’t know what they are. He lays them on his desk.

The topmost notebook is in Rowena’s handwriting. Scribbles and sketches and incoherent Latin, Italian, Gaelic — Sam knows just about enough of the latter to recognize it. But nothing is labeled, at least in more than fragments. He recognizes some of the spells Rowena used most frequently.

He feels, still — can’t stop feeling — the hitch of her gut; the gasp and the shudder through the hilt of the knife in his hand.

He turns the page. There’s a spell he recognizes: a harmless one, one Rowena sometimes used to freshen herbs before spellwork. On an impulse, Sam stretches a palm out over the bedraggled stems on his desk. He closes his eyes. “ _Revivere._ ”

He feels — or maybe he imagines — something warm in the palm of his hand. But when he opens his eyes, the plants on his desk look just as pathetic, just as broken, as they always have.

Only — no. One of the seed capsules is split open; little dull-brown grains strewn across the wood. And from one of them — no, two — no, _all_ — a tendril of green is unfurling.

It happens before Sam’s eyes. Stems push free, burgeoning. Leaves unfold like a card trick. Thin roots spiderweb across the wood — seeking soil that isn’t there. Buds swell green, then a deepening purple, rich blue. Some fan open, fringed petals spreading to reveal pale yellow stamens.

There’s a miniature garden on Sam’s desk. Bobbing blue and purple flowers. He doesn’t know their name.

 _Ars Botanica_ was one of the books in Rowena’s bag — a slim volume. When Sam opens it, the spine cracks. Each page is adorned with mildewed sketches of flowers, notes crowding the margins in Rowena’s hand.

Sam flips pages quickly, searching for any flash of purple or blue. He pauses again over lupine. The color is right, but the shape of the flowers is all wrong.

 _Against every evil rune lay, and one full of elvish tricks,_ Rowena’s handwriting reads. _If a mare or hag ride a man, take lupine, and garlic, and frankincense, bind them on a fawnskin. Bald._

The huff of Sam’s own laughter surprises him in the quiet of his room — he recognizes the name. _Bald’s_ _Leechbook_ dates dates to the ninth century; there’s a copy in the bunker’s library. Sam’s pretty sure Rowena’s _Defigere et Depurgare_ has its theoretical roots in that book — the spell he recognized her by, the first time they ever met.

There are other citations. Culpeper — that’s an herbal, he thinks, from the 1600s. The same century Rowena was born. Would she have read it, teaching herself from the pages? When she was tried for witchcraft, would that book have been evidence?

But also: Heaney. _They stood. And stood for something. Just by standing._ An Irish poet; twentieth century. Where did Rowena learn his name?

There are so many questions he can’t ask anymore. Things he never thought to wonder.

He turns another page and finds the flower on his desk.

_God made a little gentian;_  
_It tried to be a rose_  
_And failed, and all the summer laughed._  
_But just before the snows_  
_There came a purple creature_  
_That ravished all the hill;_  
_And summer hid her forehead,_  
_And mockery was still._  
_The frosts were her condition;_  
_The Tyrian would not come_  
_Until the North evoked it._  
_"Creator! shall I bloom?"_

_Death is an infinite vessel,_ says Rowena’s voice in Sam’s mind.

And the flowers are already dying. Deprived of soil, of water, they sag where they grow; they should never have been able to flower at all. Soon they’ll be as dead as the stalks that begot them.

Suddenly, Sam can’t allow it. There must be someplace outside he can plant them; Cas would know what they need.

He strides out of his room with renewed purpose; he knows he must look wild, maybe, around the eyes. He raps on Cas’s door once, twice, and it’s ajar. He pushes it in.

The room is dark and empty. “Cas?” says Sam, but he already knows he’s not there.

The library then, or the kitchen. Sam ducks his head in the latter — it’s empty — on his way out into the bunker’s main hall.

Dean is leaning on the end of the table, a glass of whiskey in his hand. He twitches when Sam skids into view, but it’s a delayed reaction — dulled. Sam draws up short.

“Hey,” he says after a moment, because Dean hasn’t said anything, isn’t really looking at him. “You seen Cas?”

This time, Dean flinches.

“He — left,” he says, in a voice that sounds scraped raw. Then, gathering himself and injecting a rough uncaring into his tone: “Said it was time for him to move on.”

Sam stares. He swallows down on his shock — once, twice before he can speak. “What did you say to him?”

Dean’s face tightens. “Nothing.” He slides from his seat, whiskey in hand, and leaves without looking Sam in the eye.

It’s a lie. But Rowena’s gentians are dying, and Cas isn’t here, and Sam doesn’t have time for second-guessing.

He ducks back into the kitchen and wets a paper towel. In his room, he gathers the wilting flowers gently into it — some of their rootlets need to be teased free of cracks in the wood. He goes out through the garage, grabs a shovel from the Impala’s trunk.

Outside, it’s nighttime. One of those nights that feels too warm until the wind blows, and then it feels too cold — the air is humid, chilly in pockets. Sam bundles his flowers carefully under one arm, digs his phone out of his pocket, and dials Cas.

It takes several seconds for the call to connect. Then it rings: once, twice, three times. By the fifth, Sam knows Cas isn’t picking up.

But he does. A click, and then a long hesitation — a breath, barely. “Sam?”

“Hey, Cas, uh.” Sam swallows. Suddenly he doesn’t know what to say. “Dean said you left, and —”

The silence on the other end of the call is a curled up, miserable thing. Abruptly, Sam doesn’t want to prod it any tighter.

“I’ve got these plants,” he says. “Gentians, I think? They grew from some seeds in Rowena’s bag — anyway. I wanted to plant them, in — in her memory, but — I don’t know the first thing about keeping plants alive. Jess always used to say I had a black thumb.” He’s babbling. “Anyway, I thought I’d — ask you if you have any advice. For, for planting them.”

There’s a long silence on the other end of the phone. Then Cas’s voice, scratchy at first. “Gentians like wetter places. There’s a seep about fifty yards behind the building, near the base of the bank — I think that would be good. Do they have roots?”

“Yes,” says Sam. “Yeah.”

“Good. You’ll want to get those into mineral soil — dig down just a little, until it gets gritty. Loosen it up some so they have something easy to grow into.”

A rush of relief washes over Sam. He can do that. “Hey,” he says. “Cas?”

“Yes, Sam?”

“Thanks. And — and call anytime, okay? I’ll miss you, buddy.”

He waits for Cas to say something else. To ask about Dean; to explain what’s happened between them. To inquire, hesitantly, if Sam thinks his brother will come around.

But he doesn’t. He just sighs and says, “Thank you, Sam.”

Then he hangs up.

The place Cas mentioned isn’t hard to find — even in the dark. Sam’s boots squish a little on the soil when he gets there, and when he kneels down, cold damp seeps through the knees of his jeans.

He uses the shovel sparingly — to loosen the soil, like Cas said — but mostly he uses his hands. Once he’s cleared out a patch to plant the mess of flowers, he arranges them carefully, nudging their roots into the loose dirt. He tries to smooth a layer over them.

The flowers look sorry when he’s done — bedraggled. They’re tilting every which way, still wilting, and he thinks their roots might come free under the weight of their sagging stems.

Closing his eyes, he holds his palm over them once more. “ _Revivere._ ”

This time, he’s sure of the tingling warmth. He opens his eyes to see a faint purple glow dissolving into the flowers.

They straighten, color flushing, leaves bristling. For a moment, Sam imagines he can feel their roots growing — stretching with pleasure through fresh dirt.

Then the vision hits him.

_He’s walking through the bunker hallways, power glittering in the veins of his hand. The lights are red; alarms are blaring. Dean is in here somewhere._

_Sam smiles. Dean is going to pay._

_He rounds the corner, and his brother is there. Bowed and pleading. Broken. Pathetic. Sam raises a hand — power coils inside him, intoxicating, ready to unleash —_

An owl’s hooting knocks him free of the vision. He’s flat on his back in the weeds, gasping, the gentians waving peacefully in the corner of his vision. Overhead, the moon is low and yellow.

He can hear leaves skittering over gravel somewhere nearby. His shoulder aches — the wound that won’t heal. He picks himself up carefully, collects his things, and starts back inside.

He should have known better than to mess with magic. Power has never led him down any road he cares to see the end of.

Inside the bunker, Dean’s sitting at the table, laptop open. “Hey,” he says, “think I might have found us a — what have _you_ been doing?”

Sam glances down at himself. He’s muddy, shovel still in his hand. And Dean’s on his feet, face white and furious. “Sammy, if you’ve been burying boxes, I swear to God —”

Sam laughs, weakly. “No, Jesus, Dean. Nothing like that. There were just some flowers in Rowena’s bag — I wanted to plant them. That’s all.”

Dean’s still looking at him suspiciously. “I promise,” says Sam.

“Okay.” Dean looks unconvinced. “Well — _you_ need a case, clearly. Good thing I found us one. Check this out.”

The words bring a rush of weariness that makes Sam want to sit down on the floor. “Dean, I —”

“Nope. Over here.” Dean beckons without looking, and Sam sighs and steps close enough to look over Dean’s shoulder at the laptop screen.

“One dead and three injured in Maryville, Tennessee.” Dean clicks the headline, and a local news video starts to play. He talks over it. “Some kind of an explosion, but witnesses said they smelled sulfur — I’m thinking demon.”

He tilts his chin up at Sam with the kind of eager confidence that usually comes with ordering a questionably named shot at a bar. Sam keeps watching the video. “Dean,” he says, “it’s a gas leak. The sulfur smell, the explosion —” He reaches out to point.

“Oh, come on.” Dean scowls, jerking the laptop away. “Like we didn’t _just_ pull that line on a bunch of civilians ourselves.”

Sam blinks. “Gas leaks are — real, Dean,” he says. “That’s — why the line worked.”

“ _Gas leaks are real, Dean,_ ” his brother mutters, mocking. He opens a new tab. “Fine. But you need a hunt, and I’m finding you a hunt. You and me. Back on the road again. Yeah?”

He grins up at Sam like he’s expecting agreement. Sam swallows. He feels hollow inside, insubstantial.

“Yeah,” he agrees, because there’s nothing else to do. There’s no arguing. Not really. Not when Dean’s like this. 

Besides, if they’re not in the bunker, Sam can’t kill him here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References from this chapter:
> 
>   * Bald's Leechbook is on [Archive.org](https://archive.org/details/leechdomswortcun02cock/page/136/mode/2up). (It's full of gems — that link will take you to the page on treatment of a "demoniac," or "fiend-sick man.")
>   * Culpeper's Herbal is on [Project Gutenberg](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49513).
>   * "[Lupins](http://a-poem-a-day-project.blogspot.com/2018/06/lupins.html)," by Seamus Heaney.
>   * "[God made a little Gentian](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/God_made_a_little_Gentian_%E2%80%94)," by Emily Dickinson.
> 

> 
> A quick note — this story diverges prior to 15.06 and Eileen's resurrection. I love Eileen and I love Sam/Eileen; I also love Sam/Rowena. This particular story is the latter. Cool? Cool.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Dean wants to hunt. So, they hunt._

Dean wants to hunt. So, they hunt.

Sam doesn’t have the spirit for it, really. For seedy motel rooms and microfiche research, for pulling on his suit jacket and his attentive frown for an interview with a witness. Dean is too-jolly, too-loud, eating constantly with his mouth open. Too much in Sam’s space; he itches, sometimes, to have another look at Rowena’s notebooks, hiding at the bottom of his duffel.

He doesn’t want Dean to know he has them. He’s not sure why.

But Dean is everywhere. Invasive, attentive. Bracing — he keeps trying to talk to Sam about Rowena. “She knew what she was getting herself into. She knew what needed to be done.”

What needed to be done — to save the world. The world, though saved, feels stubbornly colorless these days.

The visions haven’t stopped. They hit Sam at random times. Sometimes in flashes, sometimes whole scenes — himself dark with power. Dean, dead, or Dean with a gun raised to Sam’s head — _Sammy? Sammy, please._

Dean hasn’t noticed yet. Not about the visions, and not about Sam’s shoulder, still aching, the dark spot that only seems to spread.

But it’s only a matter of time. They hit him out of the blue more and more — walking down the sidewalk. Waiting in line at the sheriff’s office. Sitting at a diner over burgers and coffee — lately, neither of them says no to coffee at any time of day. That’s a bad one: _Cas, in a roadside ditch. Eyes wide and blue and staring up at the sky, shirt torn. Enochian symbols carved across his flesh._

Sam comes up for air shaking. He hasn’t heard from Cas since the night he planted the gentians. If he’s — is he —

Dean’s staring at him. His cheek is full of burger; his face has a _well, what do you think?_ expression. “I’m sorry,” says Sam, “what?”

“I said,” Dean mumbles through his mouthful of food, “do you want to go to the morgue after, or interview the witness? I mean I’ll take either but —”

“I’ll do the morgue,” says Sam, distracted.

Dean’s looking at him closely. “You sure you’re okay? You’re pale, man.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” says Sam. “Listen, I’ll — be right back, okay?” And before Dean can protest, he pushes himself across the creaking vinyl seat and makes for the diner doors.

Outside it’s loud with idling semis and distant engine brakes off the highway. Sam ducks behind the building so he can hear, stepping over the candy wrappers and used condoms strewn in with the dry leaves. His hands are shaking as he scrolls to Cas’s number in his phone and raises it to his ear.

It rings six times. Then Cas’s voice, tinny: _Make your voice a mail._ Sam squeezes his eyes shut.

“Hey, man,” he says, striving for an even tone. “I just had a — a vision about you, I guess, and I’m a little freaked. Wanted to make sure you’re okay. Give me a call back.”

He can’t think of anything else to say. He hangs up.

If Cas is dead, after Dean drove him away —

_It’ll kill him._

The knowledge presents itself with absolute surety: a cold, hard truth stuck in Sam’s throat. If Cas is dead, Sam won’t need to worry what _he_ might do to his brother anymore; not compared to what Dean will do, sooner or later, to himself.

He pastes on a false smile. He goes back into the diner. “Sorry about that,” he says. “Burger wasn’t agreeing with me. Maybe you should take the morgue.”

\---

Sam’s phone rings just as he’s leaving the witness’s house. His heart speeds up when he sees Cas’s name on the screen; he turns, abruptly, to duck behind a hedge before he answers it. “Cas?”

“Sam.” Cas’s rough voice has never been more welcome; Sam closes his eyes in relief. “I got your message. You’re having visions?”

Sam’s gut drops. He has to confess them to someone now. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Ever since the fight with Chuck. Mostly of myself hurting people —” _Dean —_ “but I just had one earlier of — of you, in a ditch. Dead.”

There’s silence, for a moment, on the phone. Then Cas says: “Did I look like the victim of a spell?”

Sam’s heart stutters. “A — an Enochian one, yeah. Cas, are you okay?”

“I'm fine, Sam,” says Cas. “But your vision — I was just attacked on the road. A few hours ago. By a young woman who seemed to — who seemed to want my grace.”

“Your _grace?”_ Sam repeats, and then, “On the road — Cas, are you hitchhiking?”

“I’m _fine,”_ says Cas again, which isn’t an answer to either question.

“Jesus,” says Sam. “Okay. What happened?”

He can practically hear Cas’s shrug. “Not much more than what I said. I was walking along the side of the road, and a young woman pulled over and attacked me. With a — taser, I believe you call them. She was reading something from an Enochian spellbook and seemed to have tools for a blood ritual, but when I fought back, she ran. She didn’t seem sure of what she was doing.”

“An Enochian spellbook?” Sam repeats. “Where on Earth did she get that?”

“It had a library sticker on the spine.”

“Jesus.” Sam pinches his nose; he can’t lurk in this hedge forever. “Well — watch out for her, okay? And stay safe. Where are you?”

He can tell Cas doesn’t want to answer that. The word comes reluctantly: “Maine.”

Maine. “Maybe she found it at the university,” Sam muses. “Lily Sunder was a professor there, wasn’t she?”

Cas makes a noncommittal sound of agreement.

Suddenly, Sam needs to say it. “Cas, you know I want you here, right? And Dean — I don’t know what he said to you, but he’s had a rough few weeks. He’ll come around. If you came home, maybe, and talked to him —”

“It was my choice to leave,” says Cas.

Sam blinks.

He says, “Oh.”

“I need to go. Let me know if you have any more visions.” And Cas hangs up, leaving Sam standing in a hedge, blinking foolishly and trying to work out an exit strategy that doesn’t raise any unwanted questions about ripped clothes or twigs in his hair.

\---

So — the visions are real, or close to real.

Sam filters through possibilities the whole next day, and the next; the whole ride back to the bunker. He used to have premonitions, of things only he could stop — this doesn’t seem like that. After all, he did nothing to save Cas, and Cas escaped anyway. These visions aren’t set in stone.

And they come, usually, with a flare of pain in his shoulder. The wound he shares with God.

 _When we win this,_ he’d said, _it’s just us. And we’re free._ But he’s more and more sure that they aren’t. Not yet. That Chuck is still out there — planning something. Maybe even planning the things Sam sees in his mind.

He isn’t going to let them happen. Not ever. Not if he can help it.

\---

That’s why — when he takes Rowena’s spellbooks to practice a few days later — he tells Dean he’s going into Hastings. He drives a couple miles north, then doubles around on a back road.

There’s a clearing in the woods by the river, not too far from home. No one ever goes there, except Sam on his runs; it’s well hidden, a couple miles deep along the trail. The bag of spellbooks thunks awkwardly against his ribs as he jogs.

It’s a weekday morning, and he doesn’t see a single other runner out on the trail, but he still checks up and down it before pushing aside the bushes that hide the clearing. He gets more leaves in his hair — a trend lately — but ignores them, and then he’s through, invisible to the outside world.

It’s nothing much, just a little open patch of woods; there’s a fallen log he can sit on. The grassy undergrowth is studded here and there with late-summer flowers: goldenrod and asters. Sam finds a bare patch of ground and begins to unpack his bag.

He’s seen Rowena do this plenty of times before, and take plenty of shortcuts, but he’s going to go by the book for his first time. He places the crystal ball carefully, checking the diagram, and the two prisms to either side of it to refract the sun. Then he lights a pair of candles and, finally, digs in his pocket for the final item: something of Cas’s.

It was surprisingly hard to find. The guy doesn’t have a lot of possessions. Finally, Sam settled on the keys to his old truck.

He hopes it’ll be enough. He extends his hands, centers himself, and squints his eyes almost closed. _“Ostende illum mihi quem quaero,”_ he says.

The crystal ball swirls with color, then flares bright.

And suddenly the image inside it more than fills Sam’s vision. He’s flying above it, looking down, invisible; silent as an owl on the wing. Wind ruffles the hair on the top of Cas’s head, and he pulls his trenchcoat tighter. Fall is further along where he is, dry oak leaves blowing across the road, the trees all but bare.

He’s walking along the shoulder of a two-lane blacktop. His expression is unreadable. But he looks unharmed.

The relief feels like an immense weight off Sam’s chest. He trusts Cas, of course he does, but — the image of his corpse is still burning in Sam’s mind. It’s good to see Cas alive. It’s good to have a vision, for once, that _he’s_ in control of — that isn’t some horror visited on him by Chuck’s twisted brain.

When he exhales, the vision fades naturally, dwindling back into its crystal ball; Sam lowers his palms, and the candle flames gutter and go out. The shadows have shifted ever so slightly in the clearing. He’s taken longer than he thought.

He’s tidying his ingredients away when the book catches his eye.

It’s open to a different spell than it was before; the wind must have ruffled the pages. It’s a simple one, still in the chapter on _Seeing,_ but this one’s littered with additional handwriting: Rowena’s annotations. Sam peers closer.

 _The Turning of the Seasons,_ the heading of the page reads.

There are only a few herbs in the spell; Sam already has them on hand. Rowena’s notes say: _Add gentian, 3 stems._

Without giving himself time to second-guess, Sam measures out the herbs into the bowl. He lights the flame; he speaks the incantation.

And the world flushes red around him.

Not red like his dreams of the bunker, though. Red like autumn — like copper, like the color of Rowena’s hair. The leaves of the trees are bronzing at breakneck speed, are falling and tumbling — a blizzard around him, obscuring everything — and when they clear the trees are bare, snow sifting down from a steely sky.

Sam holds out his hand, wondering, and a snowflake lands in his palm. He leans close to look at it. It’s six-pointed, perfect; then he breathes out and it dissolves.

A butterfly alights on his knee: dark brown and yellow cream, with bright blue spots that flare in the sun. And the sun is out again, leaves bristling from every twig it touches. It lights them gold, then green, as fresh growth unfurls among the dead stems across the clearing’s floor. Fiddleheads unroll into ferns. Violets bloom and wither. Birds are singing, and the goldenrod is growing again. The butterfly flutters away.

The transition from summer to fall is subtler. A change in the quality of the green; a few early leaves turning yellow and brown and drifting to the ground. The flowers changing. Somewhere far off, an owl calls. For a moment — just a moment — Sam thinks he sees a figure through the trees. Running away on light feet. Red hair a flag out behind her.

And then he’s alone in the clearing, tears on his cheeks and heart racing with joy, as the last of his herbs smolder into ash.

\---

When Sam gets back to the bunker, he steps through the war room doorway and nearly collides with Dean.

His head is down, shoulders high, and his eyes look red. He mumbles something, and Sam catches a whiff of whiskey; then Dean shoulders past him, and he’s gone.

The crystal decanter in the library is emptier than it was last time Sam checked. There’s still a ring of moisture on the table where a glass must have recently stood.

Sam wipes it absently with the cuff of his shirt sleeve. Yeah, he’s pretty sure crying over whiskey in the middle of the day means you’re doing just _fine._ But then — it’s not like he’s one to talk.

He fingers the resurrection sachet in his pocket. He’s taken to carrying it around; he’s not sure why. He doesn’t mean to use it for himself, or Dean, but maybe — maybe their next Charlie, or Kevin, or Maggie, or —

Sam shakes his head. It’s no good worrying about what might have been. He sighs, grabs a beer from the kitchen fridge, and heads back to drink it in his room.

\---

The vision is a bad one that night. Of the bunker massacre — Maggie screaming, eyes flaring white — only this time Sam’s the one doing it. He’s possessing Dean, he doesn’t know how, but he can feel his brother struggling — gasping for air. He can feel the desperate fear when he bears down on Dean’s will; the choking, the hopelessness, the misery of failure, and he smiles. He turns to rend another hunter in two —

— and suddenly he’s the one choking.

There are vines in his mouth. Tangling his limbs. Strong growing things, wild with power and dark with the scent of wet soil — it fills his nose. It frees him. And he’s falling out of his brother — out of the vision. He’s landing hard on his bed.

Rowena is standing over him.

She looks different and she looks the same. Clad in purple — vines and flowers twining in her hair. _“Demitte!”_ she cries, and suddenly the vision’s last hold on Sam’s mind is gone — suddenly he’s alone in his room.

Not alone. Rowena’s standing over him, hands on her hips, a smile dancing in her eyes.

Sam feels fresh tears sting his own. “Rowena —”

“Bollocks, Sam,” she says. “You’re going to make us both depressed! Stop weeping about it, aye?”

And as suddenly as she appeared, she’s gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In the cold light of day, it feels self-evident: Sam’s being haunted by a ghost._

In the cold light of day, it feels self-evident: Sam’s being haunted by a ghost.

It isn’t like it’s the first time. There was Bobby, tied to his flask; hell, even Lucifer, tangled up in Sam’s brain. He’s got some experience telling what’s real from what isn’t. And this is real — just not the same kind of real as living people.

He debates telling Dean. But Dean’s being haunted by his own demons, mired in his own kind of grief, and besides, he’d — he’d probably tell Sam to burn the resurrection sachet.

It makes sense as the anchor object. Rowena’s blood is absorbed somewhere within it, and Sam’s had it on him all but 24/7 since she died. He pulls it out more than once and thinks — thinks. But he doesn’t go to find the lighter fluid or the salt.

Instead, he digs out the ouija board.

He’s done this once before, on the floor of a hospital room. He still remembers the thrill of shock — the excitement — when the planchette started to move beneath his fingers. He remembers Dean scoffing at the idea when he brought it up later, his memories of ghosthood wiped clean. Both of them raw and furious and grieving, fresh from losing Dad.

Sometimes Sam’s not sure if they’ve ever _not_ been grieving. If there’s ever been an hour or a day unweighted by the people who aren’t there.

It doesn’t matter what Dean believes or doesn’t. Sam lays out the ouija board and centers himself. Lights Rowena’s candles again; places the sachet on the floor between them. He rests his fingertips on the planchette, squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. Then he asks: “Rowena?”

Nothing happens.

Sam lets long seconds pass. He knows better than to rush these things. Finally, he tries again: “Are you there? I — did you help free me from Chuck, in my dream?”

The candles flicker — a ghostly presence, or a draft of air? Sam waits. He makes himself be still. He makes himself listen.

Still nothing.

But he can imagine Rowena’s voice in his head, impatient and unimpressed. _Ask a stupid question, Samuel —_

Sam swallows. “Do you know how I can beat him?” His voice comes out rough, like the words have been waiting to tear free of his throat; they shock him, almost. The wound in his shoulder pulses with pain. “Can you help me?”

This time the candles burn clear and steady. There’s no movement. Not a breath of presence in the air.

Sam waits several minutes more before he tidies up the ouija board, rubs the heel of his hand across his eyes, and goes to see if Dean’s started on dinner.

\---

It isn’t even like Rowena’s the first woman Sam ever killed.

There was Mom, burned on the ceiling because of him. Jess, dead the same way. Eileen. Sarah. Charlie’s death was his fault; so was Maggie’s. And dozens more, hundreds more, people whose names he can’t even remember —

He used to think it was bad luck. Or it was the cruelty of fate. Or it was _him_ — the evil nesting inside him. He used to think he was the one blighting everything he touched.

It wasn’t, though. It was Chuck. Always Chuck; Chuck and his fucking _story._

Sam can feel his hands shaking.

The kitchen is empty, but the sink is a mess; he moves toward it. He twists the tap all the way to hot and squeezes out a dollop of dish soap. It starts to fill slowly, dirty dishes vanishing into the foam.

Even this — Rowena gave her life fighting Chuck’s madness, saving the world from the newest apocalypse he dreamed up. But who’s to say that’s not what Chuck wanted all along? Who’s to say Chuck’s whole kink isn’t watching Winchesters hurt the people they love, over and over and over and over again —

Sam hunches over, bracing himself on the edge of the counter. His shoulders are trembling.

He used to think a lot about the burden of the Life. What it would mean to be free of it. The sacrifices you make to save the world. And he wouldn’t take any of them back — not for himself. But he never volunteered to sacrifice Rowena. Or Mom, or Jess, or any of them. They had their own stories, before Sam — or Chuck — or both — came along to suck them into his.

“Sam?”

He jumps.

The sink’s on the cusp of overflowing. His fingers, clamped on its rim, are stinging; there are tears on his cheeks. He reaches hastily to turn off the tap, wipes one eye on the shoulder of his flannel, hopes the other isn’t anything Dean will see.

“Hey,” he says, turning around. “Didn’t hear you coming.”

“Yeah, I got that.” Dean’s brow is furrowed.

“I was gonna,” Sam says. “Whip up some pasta or something. Soon as I finish the dishes.”

“I’ll do it,” says Dean automatically, because of course he does; because he’s Dean. The smile follows a beat too late. “What d’you want — fluffernutter mac and cheese? Like the old times?”

For a moment, Sam wants to throw something at him; instead he groans like he’s supposed to. _“One_ vegetable, Dean — I swear, would it kill you to cook one vegetable —”

Dean grins. He’s laying out a cutting board, knife, parsley; the smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

Sam sighs and goes back to his dishwashing.

It takes Dean a minute or two to break. When he does, it’s in his gruff voice, the one he inherited from Dad — the one that brooks no questions. “Hey. You okay?”

Sam spares a glance backward. There’s a pot bubbling on the stove, more ingredients laid out on the counter. “Yeah,” he says. “Course.”

“‘Cause you don’t seem okay.”

A flash of rage lances through Sam’s chest, shocking him with its intensity. He makes himself be still; flexes his fingers on the countertop. Counts breaths: one, two. Then he turns around.

“Yeah?” he asks, crossing his arms. “What — like you’re okay?”

Dean’s face performs its best rendition of incredulous dismissal. He spreads his hands. “I’m fucking peachy, Sam. I mean —” He falters. “We beat God, we’re home free. Everything we wanted.”

It’s a struggle not to punch him.

No. That’s what Chuck wants. “Rowena’s dead,” Sam says instead, voice shaking with forced calm. “Cas is — gone, for some reason you won’t tell me. And we have no reason to believe Chuck’s really out of the picture.” _I’m pretty sure,_ he doesn’t say, _we’re still square in the middle of his._ “From where I stand, we’ve got nothing.”

For a moment, Dean’s smile fades. Then he chuckles. “Okay, _you’re_ hangry.”

He returns to his chopping.

“Damn it, Dean!”

Sam’s not quite aware of hurling down the frying pan. Just of the loud bang of metal in the sink; water sploshing. When Dean looks up again, his eyes are wider, and Sam can suddenly see another Dean in his mind’s eye. Kneeling. _Sammy, please_ —

“Okay, Sammy,” he says, heartbreak-gentle, laying down his knife. “Listen, I — you’re going through some shit right now, and I — just tell me what you need.”

“I need you to stop fucking lying.”

Dean’s smile, half-constructed, freezes on his face.

“You’re acting like _I’m_ the not-okay one, like _I’m_ the one who needs help.” The words feel vicious. “And you’re — what? You drove out your best fucking friend on the planet, the guy you — and you’re fine? Good riddance? You don’t even want to talk about him?”

Dean opens his mouth. Closes it.

“Cas is _my friend too,”_ Sam snaps, “but he’s a hell of a lot more to you.”

“That’s not —”

_“Yeah,_ it fucking is.” And he’s known it for a long time, he doesn’t know how fucking long, but this — suddenly it feels like a glaring neon sign, right in his face.

Dean and Cas have always been different. They’ve always shared a — a _more profound bond._ But Sam always figured Dean, well — Dean’s never been shy about going after what he wants. Hitting on girls, boasting about his exploits. It couldn’t possibly have taken this long, if it were — like that.

It’s _not_ like that, though. It’s like something else entirely.

Something Dean could never play for laughs. Something that took him to pieces, when Cas died two years ago. Something that could do it again.

“Take it from the guy who’s killed every woman he’s ever cared about. If Cas gets himself hurt out there and I have to watch you drink yourself to death regretting it —”

Dean flinches, hard.

“This isn’t about me,” Sam grates. “It never was. It’s about _you,_ and him, and the fact that you’re — too scared of how you feel about him to let it into your life at all.”

The words lie on the floor between them. 

For a long moment Sam thinks Dean isn’t going to say anything. Then he bites out, roughly, “So I was a dick to him. You don’t _leave._ Not if you — love someone. You don’t leave and let them just go on alone.”

“What, like I left you and Dad?”

Dean’s eyes glance up again, then down. His shoulders soften. “C’mon, that’s not what I mean.”

“I think it is.” The words won’t stop boiling up out of him. “I think you’ve spent your whole life terrified of people leaving you. I think you were never brave enough to leave anyone yourself.”

This time, Dean’s eyes snap up angry; _good_. “I don’t have to take this shit from you.”

“So don’t,” Sam fires back. “I think that’s the only way you know how to love someone — take all their shit and stick around — and it’s unhealthy. It sucks. And now Cas isn’t taking _your_ shit, and you think it means he doesn’t care.”

“What, and you think he does?” 

His voice is bitter. Bitter and defeated, enough that Sam finds he can gentle his next words — just a little. Just enough. “Have you met the guy?”

Dean looks at him, then away. Hurt and anger balance in the line of his mouth.

“He’s in Maine,” Sam tells him. He turns around to finish the dishes without waiting for Dean to answer.

\---

Sam half-expects his brother to be gone by the time he turns around again. But he isn’t; he’s still at he stove, cooking quietly, forehead creased with thought. Something’s starting to set in the line of his chin.

He’s quiet all through dinner.

“Where in Maine?” he asks finally, as Sam’s got his last forkful of pasta halfway to his mouth. It’s actually good, got a whole lemon and parsley and garlic thing going on, and Sam’s not sure if it technically contains _vegetables_ but it’s healthier than Dean’s usual fare. Maybe it’s meant as a peace offering.

“I’m not sure,” he admits. “Near Orono, maybe. I think he’s hitchhiking.”

Dean closes his eyes. A muscle twitches in his jaw. When he opens them again, he looks a little sick. “Do you think I should —”

“Yeah.”

The answer seems to catch Dean off-guard; Sam’s not sure why. He looks startled, maybe even a little pleased, as he finishes his dinner. Like there’s something he’s just starting to let himself believe.

\---

Sam’s dreams are confused that night; visions or nightmares, he’s not sure he can tell the difference. He’s stalking Dean through the bunker, or he’s stalking Rowena; he’s sliding a knife into flesh, over and over again.

He’s watching Dean crumble over Cas’s lifeless body. He’s watching someone — a girl — wield a spell too big for her, lose control, unleash it — watching Dean leap in its path. The round shock on Cas’s face as Dean’s body thuds at his feet. Or — he’s watching Cas at someone’s bedside, grace and sweat shining on his face, teeth gritted. _“I can do it —”_

_“No,”_ Dean’s saying. It echoes. _No — No — No — “Use me.”_

_“If you won’t be my heroes, that’s fine.”_ Chuck’s expression, petty, frowning. _“Haven’t you heard? It’s an age for new heroes, anyway.”_

But his face swims and fades. And there’s red hair tickling Sam’s collarbone, Rowena’s shoulderblades pressed to his chest. _“Hold tight,”_ she says, and his hands are enveloping hers — clasping something. Reins? They’re astride — not an animal, but a storm. Thunder and lightning. The world races under its hooves.

Rowena’s body feels small and warm. Like she’s still alive. Like it felt when he killed her.

_I miss you,_ he thinks, and sits up, eyes open, in the dark of his bedroom, wide awake.

\---

It’s morning. Early, but Sam already knows somehow — before he even steps out of his room — that the bunker’s empty of anyone but him.

He checks the garage anyway. The Impala’s gone. He finds Dean’s note on the counter by the coffee pot: _Gonna try Maine. Call if you need me. Thx._

Sam picks it up, fingering the paper. He reads it twice and lets himself smile. His shoulder throbs dully as he sets it back down.

He turns to examine the kitchen. Dean left it spotless — even last night’s dishes gone from the sink. Sam checks the fridge. There are leftovers in tupperware, and plenty of supplies. He’ll have time to focus on work — the dozens of incomplete tasks that he always gets distracted from. Organizing the archives. Cataloguing Rowena’s things.

Sam almost laughs. He’s alone in the bunker, with a head full of God visions and dead witches talking to him, if only when he doesn’t ask them to.

At least he can’t murder anyone if there’s no one here to kill.

He crosses the room to start a pot of coffee.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The first few days are easy. Sam has plenty to do; Rowena’s things to organize. Some fascinating volumes on Men of Letters training exercises in need of indexing. He takes his morning run, eats salads without judgment, gets to sleep on time and doesn’t dream._

The first few days are easy. Sam has plenty to do; Rowena’s things to organize. Some fascinating volumes on Men of Letters training exercises in need of indexing. He takes his morning run, eats salads without judgment, gets to sleep on time and doesn’t dream.

Without Dean looking over his shoulder, he can finally start tracking down the references in _Ars Botanica._ There are some he’s familiar with — common volumes of herblore. Bald, Culpeper, Hildegard of Bingen. Others are new to him. He finds a couple volumes on eBay — it’s his job to keep the bunker’s library complete, after all.

Rowena didn’t only reference ancient tomes, though. There’s poetry also. Sylvia Plath: _The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals._ Emily Dickinson wrote the gentian poem. Anne Brontë: _But he that dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose._

On the second day, Cas texts him a sketch of an Enochian rune, and Sam spends an enjoyable few hours digging up everything he can find on it.

_It’s an archaic term for ‘grace,’_ he texts back. _Not sure if it refers to angel mojo or not. Think like, “Amazing Grace.” Something given unlooked-for._ He attaches half a dozen photos of dusty pages.

_Thank you,_ Cas answers. _I was surprised to encounter an Enochian word I did not know._

He doesn’t mention anything about Dean.

Sam figures he probably hasn’t made it there yet. Kansas to Maine was two days’ drive for Dean at his best; might be more now. Besides, Sam didn’t give him much to go on. He doesn’t have much to go on himself. He could scry, maybe — try the whole burning map trick to locate Cas. His heart beats faster thinking about it.

He hasn’t done any magic since Dean left the bunker. He’s not sure if he’s hesitating out of anticipation, or out of fear.

The Enochian tome he unearthed for Cas is a fascinating one. It explores traditions entwined with Zoroastrianism, with extensive digressions on Avestan linguistics; the author explored Central Asia in the nineteenth century. By the time Sam looks up at the clock it’s well past one in the morning. He yawns and pries himself out of his seat, stumbling toward bed.

That night, he dreams:

_Cas is handcuffed to a chair._

_“You don’t want to do this.” His voice is calm. His eyes follow the woman pacing back and forth in front of him. She barely looks Claire’s age; there’s a knife in her hand. Her hair is long and dark and unruly, tied out of her face in a tenuous bun._

_“Shut up,” she says._

_“If you help me understand what you’re trying to achieve —”_

_“I said shut up!” There’s sweat on her brow; she wipes it with the back of her hand. “You’re a monster. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”_

_“I am not a monster,” Cas says gently, “though I am not quite a man.”_

_There’s a spellbook on the table — Old Enochian. A breeze through the broken warehouse windows rustles the pages, then dies. Is that the crunch of boots on gravel outside?_

_The girl turns. Her knuckles tighten on the knife._

_The door bangs open without warning and Dean follows his gun inside._

_What happens next, Sam sees in only glimpses — Cas’s face, white and furious — the girl raising her knife — gunshot —_

_A scream. She’s lying on the floor, hand pressed to her ribs; blood wells dark between her fingers._

_Dean’s hands dropping. Cas’s face slack with horror._

_Chuck laughing —_

_Dean’s fingers quick on Cas’s bonds, freeing him — Cas surging out of his chair, his fist snapping across Dean’s face —_

_Chuck laughing —_

And suddenly there are dark vines curling through Sam. Erupting in his blood vessels, his eyes, reaching out — his shoulder flares white-hot; he screams —

The laughter chokes and stops.

And the vines are wrestling Chuck free. Rewinding the clock. A shadow crosses the warehouse floor and fades; a gust of wind rattles the windowpanes —

_The door barely creaks as it opens. Dean slips inside with his gun at his side; the girl doesn’t see him._

_Cas’s eyes widen. “Dean,” he says. “No.”_

_The girl spins._

_“She doesn’t know what she’s doing.” Cas is talking fast. “She thinks she needs to steal my grace — I need to learn why. I think we can save her.”_

_Dean hesitates. His eyes explore the walls of the warehouse; there are runes spray-painted there. Sigils. His eyebrows raise._

_A flurry of movement. The girl’s running. Dean’s gun jerks up — then drops again. She’s out the door; it bangs behind her. An engine roars._

_It takes a moment for Dean to return his gun to the back of his jeans. “Hope I don’t regret that,” he says, with a touch of humor; the line of Cas’s mouth is thin. He rubs his wrists when Dean frees them. His chair grates on the floor when he shoves it back — far enough to stand without the two of them touching. He takes a few paces away, turns his back._

_“What are you doing here?”_

_Answers tug at Dean’s face. The dream fades._

And Sam’s in his bed, sweating through the sheets, Rowena standing over him.

“You’re real,” he blurts.

She is. She’s clad in deep purple, so dark it’s almost the color of midnight, and vines tangle in her hair. She doesn’t look like a ghost. She looks realer than a ghost, realer even than a human, and the air in his room feels different somehow. Like the walls are an illusion — a whole world spilling beyond them. Dark woodlands and mysterious glens.

“Are you,” he manages. “You’re not a ghost.”

He doesn’t think she’s going to answer. The smile hovering on her face seems impossibly remote — he thinks for a moment she’s just going to fade away.

Instead she puts her hands on her hips. “Of course not.” Her smile grows, creasing at the corners. “I’m — well, I suppose you would call it a _god.”_

There’s no mistaking the gleam of triumph in her eyes. Sam struggles to sit upright.

“Not like _him,_ of course,” Rowena adds with a shudder. She takes two paces across the room, her gown swishing behind her, then turns back. “A god of the — underworld, I suppose. I just thought I would lend an old friend a hand, but if I’m not _wanted —”_

“How?”

The word catches in Sam’s throat. His shoulder’s still blazing with pain.

Rowena goes still looking at him. Her smile speaks somehow of wild moors and moonlight, of ravens roosting in darkness, the wicked curve of an owl’s beak. “Death is a powerful spell, Samuel.”

Sam swallows. “Chuck is still out there,” he says, voice low. “Do you know how to stop him? I mean — for good?”

Her smile flickers, and she turns; her face in profile looks sadder.

“You’re on your own for that one, I’m afraid.”

By the time Sam opens his mouth again, she’s gone.

\---

In the days that follow, Sam spends more time dreaming than he does awake.

He debates the ethics of it. He could call Dean, let him know what’s happening, but that would involve explaining where his visions come from — the knot of agony in his shoulder that’s only getting worse. And explaining that would send Dean tearing back across the country, and that’s — Sam doesn’t want that.

But he needs to know Chuck’s vision hasn’t led him astray. That the events in that warehouse were what he saw — the second time around. He needs confirmation.

So, he scries.

He watches Cas sit stiffly in the Impala’s passenger seat, directing Dean down country roads. They turn into a gravel driveway. There’s a _For Sale_ sign swinging on a post, but it’s clearly mildewed with age; the house is vacant. The floorboards creak as Dean follows Cas inside.

“You can take the master bedroom,” Cas says without meeting Dean’s eyes. “It’s that way.”

Sam sees Dean open his mouth like he’s going to say something. Close it — swallow. Take his duffel and go where Cas points him.

He lets the vision blur and fade.

He checks in again in the morning, though. Again after breakfast. They’re at a diner, exchanging painful conversation over coffee and heaped plates of home fries. Dean’s smiles are too wide; he helps himself to Cas’s food. Cas isn’t smiling at all.

The rhythms are familiar ones. It could be any case Sam and Dean have worked: breakfast and research, laying out a plan. By late morning they’re back at the house, sitting side by side on the hardwood floor, bent over the spellbook. There’s blood on the cover. Dean scowls every time Cas turns a leaf before he’s done reading.

There’s a page they linger on, though. Across the top it says: _To Drain a Seraph of Its Power._

Sam goes for a run.

The cool air in his lungs feels good — it’s crisp with fall. It almost seems to help his shoulder, too. His motion feels looser, head clearer, than it has in days. He glances at his clearing as he passes, half tempted, but he runs on.

Back in the parking lot, fallen leaves litter the gravel, still shining with last night’s rain. There are no other cars. Sam catches his reflection in his windshield — face flushed with exertion, hair clinging in strands to his cheeks. He pushes it back.

The windshield is a reflective surface like any other. Would it work —?

Sam braces his hands on the hood. _Ostende illum mihi quem quaero,_ he thinks, but doesn’t say aloud.

The vision blossoms immediately: the driveway in front of the abandoned house. _“So we check in at the university library,”_ Dean’s saying, _“see if they’ll tell us who borrowed the book, track her down, and then — what?”_ And Cas is shouldering past him without answering; sliding into the Impala’s passenger seat.

Sam slips back into his own body. He can’t tell if he’s sweating more than before. If his arms are shaking from the renewed throb in his shoulder, or from triumph, or from fear.

_I shouldn’t be able to do this,_ he thinks. _Not this easily. Not without tools. It wasn’t — nothing was ever this easy, not even when I was drinking demon blood._

He wishes Rowena were here.

He misses her abruptly, piercingly, like a hole in his side; he wants her _here._ Alive. Not some distant god of something he can’t touch.

She could tell him whether he’s going too far down roads he can’t come back from. She could smile her slow smile and say something outlandish and startle him into a laugh; maybe then his chest wouldn’t hurt so badly. Maybe then he could remember how to breathe.

He almost says her name.

He doesn’t. Instead he climbs slowly into his car. Turns the key in the ignition, shifts into reverse. Watches dead leaves swirl in the rearview mirror as he pulls out of the parking lot, turns right onto the blacktop road.

Halfway home, the vision hits him so hard he nearly skids off the shoulder.

Gravel spits from his tires. He doubles over — squinting against the sun. Against the —

_Impala pulled off on a gravel shoulder, Dean frowning into the sun. The green interstate sign on the left points toward Bangor, Orono. On the right: Newport, Poughkeepsie._

_“What d’you think the odds are,” he says slowly, “of her being able to do magic without the book?”_

_Cas pauses before answering. “The Enochian language is difficult for humans to grasp without a reference.”_

_“We know she’s after you.” Dean drums a thumb lightly on the steering wheel. “We know she’s using the book to try and steal your grace. If you’re gone, and the book’s gone —”_

_“I’m not leaving.”_

_Dean’s hand drops off the steering wheel. “Why the hell not, Cas? You told me yourself, your powers are failing and — now some chick wants to steal what’s left, and you’re just gonna let her?”_

_Cas stares through the windshield for a moment. Then he unbuckles his seatbelt and opens his door._

_“Cas,” says Dean, reaching after him a moment too late, “damn it, Cas —”_

Sam’s shoulder hurts.

It hurts a _lot._ A hawk is crying, greenery blooming at the corners of his eyes.

_“Demitte! Damn it, demitte!”_

Red hair — pain like fire — a scream in Sam’s lungs, in the air around his ears —

_The Impala slows as it nears the intersection. The sign on the left points north, toward Bangor, Orono. The one on the right reads: Newport, Waterville. Dean’s eyes track it for a moment. So do Cas’s._

_They turn smoothly north, accelerating onto the highway._

\---

Back at the bunker, Sam sits on the edge of his bed and holds Rowena’s resurrection sachet in his hand.

“Rowena,” he says, feeling foolish, “I — I need your advice. You keep — helping me get Chuck’s claws out of Dean and Cas’s story, but it’s always at the last second, and I need — I think I need to _hold_ him off. I don’t know what he’s trying to do, but I think — it’s important. Please.”

He doesn’t honestly expect it to work.

But it does. A shimmer in the air, and she’s there — half-there. Remote. “Samuel,” she says, “I can’t just —”

She stops. Tilts her head. Her dress glitters, and Sam has a strange sense of vertigo — as if he’s staring into the night sky through a reflecting pool.

“Your garden,” Rowena says. “If you go there — it might give you what you need.”

And she’s gone.

Sam blinks in her wake. There’s no garden at the bunker, unless you count —

_Oh._

He nearly trips on his way up the stairs, speeds out the door and shields his eyes against the sudden glare of the midday sun. The air is cool, but the bricks of the wall are are warm; Sam keeps one hand on them for balance as he traverses the embankment that runs along the bunker’s west side.

The weedy lot behind the building is brown and gold, bleached by the autumn sun. Only a few weeds still have green clinging to them. Doubt grows in Sam’s gut as he moves toward the spot he remembers — surely the gentians are dead by now, like everything else back here.

It takes him a few minutes to find the spot. It’s hidden at the base of a low bank, masked by tall stalks of goldenrod and milkweed. He hunts, parts stems to peer through them, and — there.

The gentians haven’t turned brown.

They’re flourishing — deep green leaves, petals dark with promise. Flowers as vivid as the day he brought them to life.

It isn’t just gentians, though. All around them, among other plants have sprung up. Sam hesitates, then steps closer.

He recognizes most of them. Angelica and yarrow, with their spreading umbrellas of tiny white flowers. Herbs: lavender, rosemary, sage. Clover and campion in tangled carpets. The ink-black berries of belladonna. Long lupine plumes.

It’s a witch’s garden.

Sam thinks of _Ars Botanica,_ sitting on his dresser.

_To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,_   
_One clover, and a bee,_   
_And revery._   
_The revery alone will do,_   
_If bees are few._

He picks a single stem. He thinks for a moment. And a spell begins to take shape in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poems from this chapter: [Tulips](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49013/tulips-56d22ab68fdd0) by Sylvia Plath, [The Narrow Way](https://poets.org/poem/narrow-way) by Anne Brontë, [To make a prairie](https://poets.org/poem/make-prairie-1755) by Emily Dickinson.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So the book never belonged to the library at all,” Dean’s saying, “and the DMV said her plate was a rental. Now we’re supposed to — what? Check every car rental place in Bangor?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small warning this chapter for death of a parent (OC).

_“So the book never belonged to the library at all,” Dean’s saying, “and the DMV said her plate was a rental. Now we’re supposed to — what? Check every car rental place in Bangor?”_

_Sam can feel himself floating above them. He’s human and not-human — a canopy of tangled stems and fragrance. Unseen. There’s something outside of him, testing. It tries to get in, but his tendrils only yield, then twine, weaving themselves tighter._

_“Yes,” says Cas, and pushes himself out of the car._

\---

The spell is easy. He has everything he needs. It’s like the garden grew itself for this — like it knew what he wanted.

He doesn’t have to hold Chuck off or bind him. He simply has to hide Dean and Cas — to cloak them from Chuck’s gaze.

And that cloak needn’t be thick. It only needs to dazzle — to misdirect. A cloak made of stories, for Chuck to grasp at and find that he has nothing.

Every flower Sam adds weaves possibilities. A whole prairie full of them.

\---

_“I’m sorry, we don’t rent anything like that.” A woman eyes the print-out in Dean’s hand: a grainy traffic-cam image. “I’m not sure — we have more modern vans, if you don’t mind having, um. Windows.”_

_“No.” Cas frowns. “No windows.”_

_Dean coughs. “It’s, uh — we’re filming a short movie about — kidnapping — we’ll just go.”_

_His hand at the small of Cas’s back. Cas stills for an instant, but doesn’t slide away — lets Dean guide him toward the door._

_“Wait,” calls the woman at the desk. “You might try_ _Smith’s_ _. The salvage yard? They rent out some of their clunkers.”_

\---

Sam blends the herbs. He lights the fire. He speaks the words, the ones he wrote, the ones that wrote themselves in his head.

Then he does it again. And again, and again, every hour; only half in his body. Half floating outside of it, trance-like. The shield between one reality and the next.

\---

_Herman Smith_ _takes one look at the photo and reaches for the shotgun under his desk. “The hell do you want with Renée?”_

_“Whoa, whoa,” starts Dean. “Hey — easy there. We don’t want any trouble — we just —”_

_“She tried to steal something from me,” Cas says. “We want to help her.”_

_Dean shoots him a look. A —_ Really? _— sort of look._

_But Herman Smith lowers his shotgun and sighs._

_“That girl,” he says, “I swear to God. Thinks she can tackle everything in the world all by herself. Bad enough she’s taking care of that little brother all on her lonesome, but — robbing folks?” He shakes his head. “Wish I could say I was surprised.”_

_“We want to help her,” Cas says again, steady. “The thing she tried to take — I’d give it to her freely. If we could just find her again.”_

_Dean looks over sharply. “No fucking way you’re —”_

_“Dean,” says Cas. He holds out a hand. Dean shuts up._

_\---_

Distantly, Sam’s aware of hunger building in his gut. Of the ache that grows in his shoulder and the sweat that beads on his temples. Of the hands on the clock moving and his muscles growing stiff.

He ignores it.

\---

_They meet in the junkyard. Sky wide and autumn-blue above them; carcasses of old trucks all around them. Dean paces as they wait. Cas studies his own hands._

_The girl comes around the tailgate of an old Chevy. There’s a backpack on her shoulders and something in her hands; before they’re done turning, she shouts a word, and Cas goes flying._

_The spell slams him against the door of a flatbed Ford and pins him there — just off the ground. Dean yells and reaches for a weapon, half-turning, and Sam can practically see his struggle. Run for Cas, or the girl?_

_“Dean,” says Cas, voice thick with pain, “I’m fine.” And then, to the girl: “You’re burning your soul to do that, you know.”_

_“Like you care,” she sneers, advancing. “You don’t have a soul. I want my book back.”_

_“Dean,” says Cas again._

_Dean looks over at him. Cas gives him the tiniest nod._

_With a sigh, Dean drops his duffel. He reaches into it — the girl takes a hasty step back, doing something with her hand that shoves Cas even tighter against the metal where he’s pinned._

_“Catch,” Dean tells her._

_He throws the book. It turns end over end in the air, pages fluttering._

_The girl jerks back instinctively, then catches the book with two hands. Her motions release Cas; he slumps abruptly into the dirt._

_The girl scrambles backward, clutching her book. “Stay back, I’m warning you —”_

_“Or you’ll do what?” Dean asks coolly. “You can’t be very far into Enochian magic — you’ve still got both your eyes.”_

_She flinches._

_Cas shoots Dean a quelling look, but he doesn’t see it; he’s looking at the girl. “What’s your game here?” he asks, advancing at a slow stroll. “You — what, found an old spellbook and figured you’d mess around with it? Try a nice ritual murder or two, that sounds fun?”_

_The girl’s shoulders hunch. Her next words are spoken almost into her chest._

_“I was_ chosen,” _she says. “By God.”_

\---

_Chuck,_ thinks Sam, _you fucking asshole._ He wipes sweat off his brow.

\---

_They’re sitting on opposite tailgates. The girl — Renée — kicking her boots, her posture miserable, the spellbook cradled in her lap. Cas is facing her, eyes earnest; Dean leans at his side, turned half away from them both._

_“I didn’t believe it at first,” she confesses. “I mean — I’ve never believed in any of that. Even if I wasn’t going crazy, why would he choose — me? But he told me that he wanted to help me. He led me to the book. He said his angels had betrayed him, but before they did, they used to — heal people. They used to share their power.”_

_Cas’s eyebrows tighten in sympathy. “We still do,” he says, “though there are far fewer of us now, and our powers are much diminished.”_

_Renée glances at him and swallows. Sam has the sense that even though Cas is the one facing her, she’s talking mostly to Dean._

_“He showed me what angels were,” she continues. “I — wasn’t sure at first. They looked so much like people. But then I — I found a spell for true visions in the book, and — that’s how I found_ him.”

_She jerks her chin at Cas. There’s venom stinging the fear in her voice._

_Dean opens his mouth. But Cas speaks first: “What did you see?”_

_“I saw he was right,” Renée spits. “You are a monster. You killed your own son. He was begging for his life and you — you put your hand on his forehead and you_ killed him.”

_Dean’s face creases with confusion. But Cas bows his head and closes his eyes._

_“Jack,” he agrees._

_“You — hang on.” Dean lurches to his feet; he turns toward Cas. “You — that was Belphegor, not Jack. And you —”_

_He pivots. He points at Renée, eyebrows arching in a complicated frown, and appears to be at a loss for words. He lets his arm drop._

_His face looks tired, blank, a little sick. “That was not our son,” he says._

_Behind him, unseen, Cas’s chin jerks up._

_But Dean doesn’t see. He’s looking at Renée like his heart is breaking; like all the equations are assembling themselves into agonizing order. “You have a little brother, right?”_

_She opens her mouth. Closes it. Nods._

_“Can you imagine,” Dean asks softly, “what you’d do if he died?”_

_This time, she flinches from him — turns her whole body away, one knee tucked against her chest, a fist pressed to her mouth._

_“There are things that can take over a person’s body. Even after he dies. Can you imagine what you’d do if something was wearing your little brother like a suit — walking around in his skin and talking with his mouth? But it wasn’t him — it was something evil.”_

_Renée’s head swings to look at him, eyes blazing._

_“I’d kill it,” she whispers fiercely. “I’d —”_

_“That’s what Cas did.”_

_There’s a long silence._

_Then Renée says, in a very small voice: “Oh.”_

_Cas levers himself off the tailgate. “He’s sick, isn’t he? That’s why you wanted my grace. I can heal him for you — at least, I can try.”_

_Her brow creases in confusion. “I — no, I mean yes, but — it’s not my brother. It’s my dad.”_

_\---_

Sam stumbles over the incantation this time. He’s dripping sweat; his hands tremble as he measures the ingredients, and he has to stop, twice, to rest them. To make sure he gets it right.

How long has he been doing this? Less than a day. He can keep doing it — he’s fine.

\---

_The street Renée leads them down has seen better days. The houses might have looked nice when they were first built, but they’re packed close together, sagging now with age. Most of them are duplexes. The front yards vary. One is dry grass and broken beer bottles; the next has rose bushes, lovingly tended. A bird bath, a little stone walkway to the gate._

_That’s the one Renée turns into. The paint on the steps is chipped. She ascends them and reaches for the door._

_Before she can touch the knob, it flies open._

_There’s a boy standing there. Late teens, Sam thinks; delicate features, medium build. Renée lurches back. “Colin — I told you to get out of here!”_

_“Yeah, so you can bring people here you don’t want me to meet! Renée, if you’re doing something stupid for money again —”_

_He sees Dean and Cas and breaks off._

_Renée’s shoulders slump. “Look, they’re not — they think they can help Dad.”_

_Colin frowns. After a moment, he says, “Oh.”_

_“I know it’s been hard, but if you just trust me —”_

_“Yeah, sure, whatever,” says Colin. And he’s rattling down the steps; he bumps into Cas on his way out the gate. “Have fun.”_

_Dean turns to watch him go. He vanishes around the street corner, hands tucked deep in his pockets._

_Into the silence, Cas says politely, “This is a nice garden.”_

_Renée’s eyes are distant — still watching the street. “That’s all Colin.” She comes back to herself suddenly; her hand closes on the doorknob. “Come on. Dad’s upstairs.”_

_\---_

The spell is guttering again. Should it have faded so quickly? Did Sam measure something wrong? He tries to remember what he last did. His page of notes swims in his gaze.

A far simpler version of the spell might work. But he doesn’t want to risk it. Whatever Chuck’s designs for this girl, for Dean and Cas — he can’t let them happen.

\---

_Renée’s father is dying._

_It’s the only thing Sam could have expected, after everything; it’s still hard to see. The bedroom is cluttered and dark, all its old contents crowded out of the way to make room for a hospital bed. The man who occupies it is hooked up to monitors and tubes._

_“The hell are you,” he mumbles when they enter the room. “Who —”_

_“Hey, Dad,” says Renée softly. “This is — Dean and Cas. They think they can help you.”_

_There’s a chair by the bedside. Cas drops into it, extends a hand over the man’s chest, and closes his eyes._

_A faint glow spreads from his palm. It’s not as bright as Sam remembers; he can almost see the spark that fuels it struggling. A frown of concentration forms on Cas’s brow._

_And it doesn’t matter, suddenly, that Sam’s been holding Chuck off all this time. That he’s been pouring himself into the spell — because this is it. This is exactly what he saw in his dream._

_Cas can’t do it._

_He’s going to drain himself trying. He’s going to drain himself until he has nothing left, and Dean will have to realize he sat there and let it happen; Dean will look at Renée and her father and her brother and see Cas’s killers; Dean will do — Sam doesn’t know —_

Dean, _he tries to say, somehow, into his brother’s mind._ Dean — stop him.

_He isn’t sure if it works._

_But a moment later, Dean jerks to attention. His gaze flies to Cas — and then he’s next to him, gripping his arm. “Cas — no. No —”_

_Cas grits his teeth. Grace and sweat are shining on his face. “I can do it —”_

_“No!” says Dean again. He turns wildly to Renée. “He doesn’t have the juice. He’s — you have the book, right? There’s a spell in there — Cas, you can use me.”_

_Cas lowers his hand. He looks up at Dean. “What?”_

_“You can use some of my soul.” Dean’s flipping through pages. “Here, it said something about burning someone else’s soul for power — this spell. You can use mine.”_

_But Cas isn’t looking at the page; his eyes are on Dean’s face. “Dean,” he says, “you don’t —”_

_“I should’ve stopped you,” Dean says roughly. “Okay? I should’ve never let you leave. I don’t want to do this shit without you, not any of this shit, and I’m — not letting you go like this either. Not if I can help.”_

_Cas’s face does something complicated. He says, after a long moment, “Dean.”_

_“Come on,” says Dean, quiet. “There’s a sigil here, right? We can do it together. Just —”_

_“No.”_

_Both of them turn in surprise when Renée jerks the book out of their hands._

_She looks sick. “No,” she says more firmly. “You — he’s not worth it.”_

_In unison, Dean and Cas look back at her father. He’s unconscious again; his breath rattles in his chest._

_“He’s — he’s my dad, and I love him, but —” Tears are streaming down Renée’s face. “I don’t want this.”_

_Suddenly she’s flipping pages in the book, frantically. She finds the one she wants and holds it up for them. “You see that? That’s — I could’ve used that. Long ago. I could’ve burned my own soul to save him. But I didn’t want to. I was gonna steal an angel grace instead, and I thought it was okay, but I was — I was wrong. If I won’t trade my own soul to save him, I can’t — I can’t trade anyone else’s either.”_

_Dean rises slowly. “Renée —”_

_“He’s an asshole,” she bursts out. “He’s an asshole, and he said things to Colin that — that I can’t —”_

_She pauses. Breathes out. Straightens her shoulders. “And even if he wasn’t. No one’s worth that. I — I don’t want you doing that. For me, or him, or anyone.”_

_There’s a long stillness. Dust motes dance in the narrow sunbeam through the blinds._

_Then Cas says, kindly, “I can ease his pain. With only my own grace — I can make this gentler for him.”_

_Renée’s chest expands with a breath; contracts. “That would — be very kind,” she says._

_Cas does it._

_It leaves him weak; his face is waxy, and when he’s done, his chin slumps suddenly toward his chest. Dean catches his shoulders; bends close to ask him something. Helps him down the stairs._

_In the kitchen, Cas leans against a counter and drinks a glass of water. Renée twists her hands. “Thank you,” she says finally. “I don’t know — I don’t deserve what you’ve done.”_

_“What are you gonna do next?” Dean asks. He nods at the spellbook. “Gonna keep that?”_

_She looks startled by the idea. After a moment, she answers, “I don’t — I don’t want to burn my soul. But —”_

_She breaks off. Dean nods his understanding. “It’s hard going back when you know what’s out there.”_

_Renée hesitates. Then says, “Yes.”_

_“Listen,” Dean tells her, “there are other ways of doing magic. There’s a whole world out there. My brother — he could help you out with that. He’d also take that book off your hands if you want. Either way — you can call us anytime.”_

_Renée writes down his number. Then she asks, shyly, “Was it really — God, speaking to me? What do I do if he tries again?”_

_Dean’s mouth is a flat line. “Trust me. We’ll be having a talk with that fucker, and soon.”_

_\---_

Are the lights flickering in the bunker, or is it just the spots in Sam’s own vision?

“Samuel,” says Rowena. _“Sam_ — oh, bollocks —”

He smiles a little at the memory. It makes sense that he’d hallucinate her; but she’s gone.

\---

_Dean offers an arm to support Cas down the front steps, but he takes them on his own. He leads the way across the little yard, and out the chain-link gate; he turns to wave goodbye to Renée. But he pauses with his hand on the Impala’s passenger door._

_“Cas,” says Dean, “what —”_

_Cas turns so swiftly that for a moment Sam thinks he’s going to hit him._

_He’s wrong. Cas’s hand flies, but it’s not in a punch. His fingers curl instead around the back of Dean’s neck, pulling him close._

_There’s a moment when Dean’s body freezes. Locks up rigid with surprise. Then his hands are in Cas’s trenchcoat and they’re kissing, there on the cracked sidewalk, among skittering leaves._

_This isn’t Sam’s business. He lets the vision fade. It lingers, though — the two of them in symmetry. Framed by chain link and autumn roses. The Impala behind them, gleaming back at the wide blue sky._

_\---_

He comes to himself — fully to himself — slowly. His head is swimming; his mouth is parched, cotton-dry, and his t-shirt is soaked with sweat. The bunker’s lights feel bright, too-warm.

There’s a shadow blocking some of them. He wishes it would move closer.

It does.

The punch explodes across his jawbone, snapping his head back. The world swims; he gasps. He can taste blood.

The shadow leans close, and its face resolves out of blurriness.

“Hey, Sam,” says Chuck. “Sorry — sitting duck. Couldn’t resist. I think you and I should talk. Don’t you?”

He snaps his fingers, and the world goes white.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sam comes to slowly._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple quick notes — what I thought might be one chapter here is going to be two instead. There's also an epilogue. So I'm upping the projected chapter count from 6 to 8.
> 
> I should also say, while this story diverges after 15.03, it does incorporate some elements of subsequent canonical plots up through 15.09 (The Trap), as will be evident in the first part of this chapter — in particular, the storyline from 15.04 involving Chuck and Becky Rosen.

Sam comes to slowly. He’s on a carpeted floor.

He blinks, then blinks again, and shapes start to resolve around him. There’s a chair leg near his eye. Lurid colors on the carpet. Something large and hazy and pink revolving in the background; he squints, and it’s an elephant, framed by rows of slot machines.

_ “Sam!” _

Sam lifts his head — it aches hideously — to see who spoke.

For a moment, he thinks he’s hallucinating. But there she is, sprawled on the floor, hands tied in front of her. A strip of duct tape hangs half off her face.

“Becky?” he asks.

There’s a man in a fishing vest tied up beside her. He makes a muffled sound. Two children with scared faces are crowded at her back. “Sam,” she says again, “what are you  _ doing _ here, if he comes back he’ll —”

She gasps and falls abruptly silent.

Sam can guess who’s behind him. He doesn’t give Chuck the satisfaction of craning around to look.

A moment later, it doesn’t matter, because he’s flying across the floor, back slamming into the nearest slot machine. The shock of the impact whites out his vision for a moment. He groans, gasping for breath.

“You leave him alone!” Becky’s yelling. “Chuck, you asshole, you —”

Chuck snaps his fingers.

Becky’s voice goes silent. She keeps mouthing furiously without a sound.

Chuck turns back to Sam. “That’s better.” He pulls out a chair from the nearest slot machine, then swings it around so he can straddle it backward. Folding his hands on the headrest and resting his chin on his knuckles, he says, “Now, Sam. You’re going to tell me where your brother is.”

So he doesn’t know.

_ The spell’s still working, _ Sam thinks dizzily.  _ It’s still working. _ He recalculates coefficients in his head.

Out loud, he says, “Screw you.”

Chuck’s mouth twists. He extends his hand.

Fire lances through Sam — through his shoulder wound, down his limbs, up his neck and the sides of his face. He screams, vision whiting out again; his body is already pushed too close to its limit, it can’t take this, if Chuck keeps going he’s going to pass out —

— but Chuck draws back gasping, hand clamped to his own shoulder.

There are lights dancing in Sam’s eyes. “Screw you,” he gasps, again.

There’s a vicious sneer on Chuck’s face, but it’s also white with pain. “You can’t stop me,” he snaps. “What, do you think you’re the  _ heroes _ here? You’re  _ my _ heroes. I  _ made  _ you.”

Sam thinks of all the long midnight drives dozing in the backseat of the Impala, of the shotgun practice, of watching Dean die; he thinks of the Men of Letters bunker, of his books and his spells, of Rowena.

“We made,” he grates, “ourselves.”

Past Chuck’s knee, he can see Becky glance up at him, eyes shining; her face is blurry.

Her hands are busy with something. She’s — typing? Yes, she’s got a phone wedged between her knees, tapping away rapidly. As she works, her mouth presses into a thin line.

Sam wishes he could tell her it’ll do no good. There’s no one she can contact who has a prayer of taking down Chuck.

“But if you won’t  _ be _ my heroes, that’s fine,” Chuck’s saying. “Haven’t you heard? It’s an age for new heroes, anyway.”

Sam swallows. Whatever Becky’s attempting, the least he can do is distract Chuck’s attention. He says, “Renée.”

“A bit lackluster, I know.” Chuck shrugs. “But I’ll mold her yet. You’re going to be the villains in her story — you, your brother — and oh, it’ll be sweet to watch her take you down.”

Sam thinks of Dean and Cas, leaning against counters in Renée’s kitchen; of Renée’s brother and his rose garden. He laughs, tipping his head back against the metal. “You don’t know yet, do you? You can’t see any of them.”

The lights in here are somehow both very dim and very bright. He closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, Chuck’s mouth is thin, his eyes icy, fixing Sam in a glare.

He looks frightening, suddenly. He looks like a vengeful God.

“Maybe torturing you for information won’t work,” he snaps. “Maybe I need to torture — her.”

He swings around.

And Sam’s arms and legs snap suddenly together — zip ties appearing out of nothing to cut into his flesh. He can’t move. And Chuck is advancing on Becky, who only bends lower over her phone, hair brushing the screen. The man beside her struggles wildly in his bonds; his shouts are muffled by the duct tape across his mouth. One of the children bursts out crying.

Chuck pauses for a moment to look at the man. “You know she was married to him once, don’t you, Rod?” His face is a parody of concern. “She dated  _ me _ once, too. You were only ever a —  _ distant _ third choice.”

Becky shakes her head without looking up. And then she taps her phone screen one final time, triumphantly, straightens, and turns it around in her hands to thrust in Chuck’s face.

He reaches out — then frowns. Pauses. “What —”

Becky smiles, gesturing to her wordless mouth.

Chuck huffs a sigh of irritation and snaps his fingers.

“Rod — don’t listen to him,” Becky says immediately. And then, to Chuck: “Your ending. The one you drafted on my computer? I posted it. To AO3.”

“What?” says Chuck again. “No, you — you can’t do that.”

“I did,” she says sweetly. “Do you know how many subscribers I have, Chuck? They’re  _ all _ going to see it.”

Sam has no idea what she’s talking about. But Chuck’s face is white; Becky adds, “They’ll be  _ pretty  _ upset about it — I did try to add the right warnings — but trust me, I explained. Within an hour, Carver Edlund’s leaked ending to the  _ Supernatural  _ series is going to be all over the internet.”

“No,” says Chuck slowly. “No, I — you can’t do that! I need to give them the  _ lead-up. _ The build to the climax — delete that.”

Becky yanks her phone away. “No.”

“Give me that — damn it —”

Chuck crouches, grabbing for the phone, and Becky jerks away. She falls back against Rod’s shoulder, twisting to keep the phone tight against her chest, then twists again and tosses it — in a clumsy arc over Chuck’s head — to Sam.

He has to stretch out incredibly to catch it with his zip-tied hands; his muscles scream. “Hang on —” says Chuck, wheeling, struggling to his feet.

Sam grips the phone in two hands and pulls it close to his chest. He bears down. It takes a moment — then glass splinters, plastic snaps. The phone bends in half.

Chuck stops up short. From behind him, Becky says faintly,  _ “Wow.” _

Chuck wheels on her.  _ “Take it down.” _

She blinks innocently up at him. “How?”

For a moment, as Chuck glares down at her, Sam thinks he’s going to smite her into dust on the spot.

Then he snaps, “I’ll do it myself,” and he’s gone.

\---

The moment Chuck vanishes, Becky’s already scooting across the floor toward Sam. “Rod had his fishing knife,” she says excitedly. “It might have — scales or something on it, ew, but — here.” She reaches between Sam’s wrists, saws at the plastic for a moment, and it parts.

“Thanks,” he manages. His head is pounding, but he takes the knife from her to free his ankles. Then he reaches to her to return the favor.

She pulls back. “No, Sam — he’ll just find us again if we get free. You at least, you’ll have a chance of stopping him —”

But Sam still has some herbs from the spell in his pocket. “Trust me, Becky,” he says. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

She hesitates for a moment, then extends her wrists in consent.

Freeing Rod the kids is quick work, even if Sam’s sense of gravity keeps sliding sideways and making him stumble. He has to sit down again to make them the charm, pulling herb stems out of his pocket, weaving them rapidly together. He mumbles a few words of Latin and hopes it’ll work.

“Keep this on you,” he tells Becky. “It should hide you from him.”

Her husband — Rod — puts his hand on her shoulder. “How are we supposed to away from here, anyway? Wherever here is?”

Sam glances despairingly toward the doors. “I’ll figure something out.”

How he’s going to get himself out of here, he doesn’t know. He can barely see straight; he doubts he can drive. Especially not from — he surmises, blinking in the sun at the license plates in the strip-mall parking lot — Nevada.

Doesn’t matter. Becky first. He picks a likely old beater, and he doesn’t even have to find something to jimmy the door — it’s unlocked. A moment later, he’s got the right wires freed, and it putters to life. It has half a tank of gas.

“We’re  _ stealing  _ a  _ car?” _ Rod asks.

Sam ignores him. “If you need to turn it off,” he advises Becky, “untwist these two wires. Then to start it again, twist them together and then touch this wire to that one, okay? Better yet, just don’t stop. Not until you’ve gotten a good ways away.”

She nods seriously as she slides into the driver’s seat. Rod gets in the passenger side, then reaches out to hang Sam’s charm on the rearview mirror. The kids pile in back.

Their faces look pale but determined. They’re going to do okay, Sam thinks.

“Sam,” Becky says, out the window, “good luck.”

“Thanks.” He doesn’t say,  _ I’ll need it. _

As they’re puttering out of the parking lot, though, a black SUV turns in past them. It pulls up alongside Sam, and the mirrored window rolls down.

The man inside is young, athletic-looking, blonde, in a black t-shirt that shows off his muscles. “Hey,” he says lazily, pulling his sunglasses down far enough to look at Sam over the frames. “Boss said you might need a lift.”

He blinks. His eyes turn black.

Now’s not the time for questions. “Yeah, all right,” says Sam, and climbs inside.

\---

He must sleep most of the way back to Kansas — a twenty-hour drive, as he’d judge it. Maybe demons have their own tricks for speed limits. Either way, when he peels his cheek off the leather seat and looks around to discover they’re outside the bunker, his body feels achy but refreshed. He can see clearly; his head feels unfogged for the first time in days. 

Rowena’s waiting for him inside.

“You’ve distracted Chuck  _ very  _ effectively,” she tells him in explanation. “I can move more freely than I did before.”

She seems to have toned down her whole glittering-with-dark-power thing, at least a little; she looks like herself. She follows Sam into the kitchen and watches as he microwaves an entire tupperware of leftovers.

He’s hungrier than he could have imagined. He wolfs it down bite after bite, standing at the counter, then realizes — he’s eating like Dean. He stops, self-conscious, and offers, “Did you — want any?”

Rowena’s mouth curves in amusement. “No, dear.”

When he finishes, and when he’s gulped down an entire glass of water and half of another, he finally sets it down and says, “We need to talk.”

She raises her eyebrows.

He’s been thinking about it since he woke up. Maybe he’s been dreaming about it. He needs to deal with Chuck; he needs to do it once and for all. Before Dean and Cas get back and try to complicate things. He says, “You once told me magic could do anything.”

He glances over, swiftly, to gauge her reaction. But instead —

Instead, he’s knocked back somehow, overwhelmed all over again by the sheer  _ realness _ of her. She’s here, in his kitchen, and she’s beautiful; she’s so much more beautiful than memories can hold. It’s easy to think of Rowena and think of power. It’s easy, too, to think of vulnerability — that flutter, again and again, of her life’s breath through the hilt in his hand.

There is so much more in her. So much beauty and humor and wickedness and love. He missed so much, in life — he aches all over again at losing it.

She looks up at him from under her bangs, and her eyes are dancing. “At least offer a girl a drink first.”

Sam laughs, and runs a hand through his hair. “You’re right — I’m sorry.”

In the library, he pours them both whisky — the good stuff, Glencraig. They sit in opposite armchairs, and Rowena closes her eyes as she sips. “Fergus would have liked this.”

“It was his favorite,” Sam tells her. “We kept it on hand for — when we really needed to butter him up.”

Her eyebrows arch again. “Are you  _ ‘buttering me up,’ _ Samuel?”

He laughs again; then he swallows. This is it.

“You said — you said death is an infinite vessel. If you know how to use it.”

She’s watching him.

He says, “I want to use it to stop Chuck.”

Rowena’s eyes might widen.

She sets her glass down lightly, though; she speaks just as lightly. “It’s not that simple.”

“I want to,” Sam tells her. “I — I’m ready. Besides —”

_ Besides, it wouldn’t be so bad if you were there. _

He doesn’t say it. But her chin jerks up as if he did.

Her eyes lock on his, startled, undone. She looks suddenly small, he thinks; she’s never looked small before. Her lips part, but she doesn’t speak, just looks at him and looks at him, as if he’s just punched her in the gut; as if he’s stabbed her all over again. 

_ I’m sorry, _ he wants to say.  _ I am so, so sorry — please don’t say no. _

But when she finally speaks, it’s slowly, eyes glittering. “Sam,” she says, “I feared death. I fought my whole life to avoid it. To  _ conquer  _ it. I saw Billie again when I died, did you know that?”

Sam shakes his head. He can remember that night in the hotel — the blast of power that knocked him from his chair. Rowena crumpled on the floor. Billie’s infinite patience, her infinite indifference; her hand tipping up Rowena’s chin.  _ Some things just are. You already know how your story ends. _

He hopes there was comfort, there, after — some kind of solace in Death’s implacable calm.

But whatever secrets Rowena might have learned from her, they aren’t his to hear — not today. She’s smiling at him. “But you? You’ve never fled the grim reaper.” She stretches the  _ R _ s, rolls them. “That is not the foe you dream of at night. That monster is —”

And suddenly, Sam understands. “Myself,” he says. “My powers.”

“Your powers,” Rowena agrees. “And your wildness, and your darkness. That’s what it will take to destroy Chuck.”

It’s an old tradition; death may mean death, sometimes, but it always means transformation.

And she’s right. He’s never feared his ending, not really; he has known too much of the things that go on and on. Changing, though — himself as some monster, the demon blood rising up within him, or his own weakness, his own hate —

If he is to transform —

“Tomorrow,” says Rowena. “It’s Samhain. Come join my Hunt.”

Sam looks up at her, startled. “Your — hunt?”

And whatever she’s been doing to seem smaller, more human, is gone. Her gown is curling into smoke around her; into glossy raven-backs. “Oh, yes,” she tells him. “My court is rather different than it was last time you visited. I think you might like it, though.”

For a moment, she opens her palms toward him, and he feels as though vines are brushing the back of his neck, cupping his cheek.

Then she’s gone.

There’s a scroll resting in her seat. Heavy parchment, sealed with red wax. Sam picks it up; the seal shows an owl’s face.

He uses his knife to open it without breaking it. Then he unrolls Rowena’s message.

It’s an invitation.  _ Lupine, _ it says,  _ belladonna, gentian. _

It’s an invitation in the form of a spell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to the OTW. I don't know what they've done to make AO3 Chuck-proof, but I'm pretty sure they did it.
> 
> ETA: I went and made a very belated [tumblr masterpost](https://gravelghosts.tumblr.com/post/627704020931330048/revivere-spn-fic-samrowena-deancas-rating-t) for this fic.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sam calls Dean before he goes. He’s tempted not to — but he wants to do this right._

Sam calls Dean before he goes. He’s tempted not to — but he wants to do this right.

“Hey, man.” Dean’s voice is low; Sam can hear rustling. “Sorry, just — Cas is sleeping. Weird, I know.” There’s a creak of a door, some rapid footsteps, then the crunch of gravel. Sam can envision it as if he were there: Dean clattering down the porch steps to lean against the Impala in the driveway. In a more normal voice now, he asks, “What’s up?”

“Just thought I’d check in. See how you guys are doing.”

There’s a huff of breath over the line. Then Dean says, “We’re — good, Sammy. We’re doing real good.” His voice is warm with wonder.

Sam finds his own heart aching. They fucking deserve this; Dean deserves this. After everything.

“You find Cas?” he asks, even though he already knows, because he wants to hear Dean tell it.

Dean does; the whole story, in animated bursts of exposition. The first encounter with Renée. The hunt to find her, the conversation in the junkyard. “Man, she reminds me of me at that age,” Dean says, and Sam’s heart squeezes and he doesn’t say,  _ God, Dean, that’s exactly the point. _

Dean tells him about Renée’s father. About Cas’s near-sacrifice; about the Enochian spellbook that’s now in their care. “I don’t think she’s done, though,” he adds. “I told her I had a brother who could help her with the less eye-for-an-eye witch stuff, if she wanted, but I also thought — she might want to meet Patience, and Claire.”

“You give her my number?”

“Yeah, and mine, and Claire’s. She’s a good kid, Sam. Her brother too.”

“They sound like it,” Sam agrees.

They lapse into silence for a moment after that. Sam wonders:  _ Is he going to tell me? How is he going to tell me? _

“Also, uh,” says Dean. “Me and Cas, we’re — me-and-Cas. I guess.”

Sam bursts out laughing.

He can’t help it; the strain of the last few days has to finally break. “Hey, fuck you,” Dean’s saying, but Sam can’t stop laughing; finally, with tears in his eyes, he manages, “Are you — dating? Going steady?”

“Fuck you,” says Dean again, easily, but he sounds like he’s smiling. “Sure. We’re  _ going steady.” _

“I’m happy for you, man,” Sam tells him, more seriously. “You deserve this.”

“Yeah, well.” Dean sounds embarrassed and pleased. “How’s things on your end?”

That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?

Sam draws in a breath. “Well —”

And he tells his brother the truth.

Not all of it; not about the scrying and the spell-casting, not about how he prevented Chuck’s would-be meddling with Dean and Cas and Renée. He’ll tell him that later. It’s too fresh now; Dean deserves a respite.

But he tells him about Rowena. About his shoulder wound, and about dabbling in magic. About Chuck capturing him, and Becky’s family; about getting free.

“Jesus Christ, Sam,” says Dean. “I’ll — we’ll be there as soon as we can. Cas is pretty beat but I think he can sleep in the car, we’ll —”

“Don’t,” says Sam. “Let him rest. I’ve got a plan for the next move, and it’s not something you can help with anyway.”

And he tells Dean about Rowena’s invitation to her Hunt. About the reading he’s done in the day since: “It’s a common legend to many Northern European countries. Led by Odin, or a fairy king, or even a historical figure; some Christianized versions even involve Lucifer or Gabriel or Cain, though that’s probably apocryphal.”

“Bet Gabe did it at least once,” Dean puts in.

True enough. “Point is, it’s some sort of cavalcade of ghostly figures riding across the land. In many versions, they can draw in the souls of those they pass sleeping to join them. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Which will accomplish — what, exactly?” Dean sounds doubtful.

Sam laughs. “I’m not — honestly sure. But I trust Rowena. And after everything she’s done for us —”

“Yeah,” says Dean. “Yeah, okay, Sammy. Listen — be safe, and let us know when you’re out. We’ll be there pretty soon.”

“Tell Cas I said hi,” Sam tells him, and he hears Dean smile as he answers, “Will do.”

Then they hang up, and there’s little left to do but wait until dusk.

\---

It’s a simple spell. He uses the same bowl and owl skull Rowena did for  _ Sanetur acre vulnus; _ after that, it only takes three herbs.

He tucks Rowena’s resurrection sachet in his pocket, just like usual — but that isn’t part of the spell. It’s just habit by now.

The moment the smoke curls around him, Sam yawns; the soporific effect is intense and all but immediate. He doesn’t kick off his boots, just stumbles into bed and spares one final, waking thought to hope he doesn’t burn the bunker down somehow.

He doesn’t go immediately to Rowena, though.

He’s floating in fog. In the damp gray of it, it’s hard to tell whether there’s any light; is it dusk, or the dead of night? There’s ground below his boots, he thinks, but he can’t feel them touching. When he tries to move, he feels the fog leaning into him, moving past him, but he can’t feel his own footfalls. Nothing changes that he can see.

For a moment, he thinks he catches a scent of damp leaves. Is he in a forest? Or is his brain just inventing things, sensory input where there is none?

The moment he thinks it, he can hear something: the  _ drip-drip-drip  _ of water onto leaves. Like fog droplets, clinging to naked branches, swelling until they drop to the leaf litter below.

Can he see them, skeletal through the mist?

There’s another sound. A rhythmic  _ swish-swish, swish-swish. _ A muted splash.

And suddenly there is water washing the toes of Sam’s boots. He jolts back, and if not for his strange weightlessness, or the earth’s strange groundlessness, he’s sure he would fall. He’s standing on some shore, gray water lapping what might be sand, and then — there’s something coming. Out of the mist.

It’s the prow of a boat.

It’s made of weathered wood, or maybe of the fog itself, conjuring itself into trick-solid form. Little waves splash gently against its sides. A long pair of oars are rising and falling, rising and falling, bent by a narrow back.

Sam stands motionless as the rowboat noses to a stop in the sand before him. The ferryman goes still, his hands still wrapped around his oars. He doesn’t turn to look at Sam.

But beyond him, the mists are shifting. Roiling, growing — Sam glimpses starbursts of darkness, twists of light. Something great and heavy is moving through them, something that should make his heart hammer and freeze him in his tracks — and it does. He feels fear, pure fear, wash through him, as it hasn’t in years; it locks up his lungs. It climbs his throat.

What steps out of the fog is a hellhound.

It isn’t a hellhound, though. Not like any Sam’s ever seen.

It’s larger than he could have imagined. Larger than anything on earth. It towers over the ferryman, and its weight should sink the small boat — but Sam already knows there’s no true weight here. The ferryman should at least be shrinking in terror, staring down those colorless eyes.

He isn’t. And the hound isn’t growling, either, or baring its dagger-like teeth. It’s just standing there, immense and black and wolf-like, and Sam thinks — are those vines rippling through its fur?

A moment later, high atop the hound’s back, two purple flames blaze into light.

In the colorless world, they’re like beacons — like the fairy-lights in stories, drawing you into the nothingness of an enchanted swamp. And the mist is parting, to reveal red hair — to reveal a glittering gown with all the stars of the sky in it. The curve of Rowena’s smile.

An owl screams.

It plummets out of the darkness a moment later, over Rowena’s right shoulder — pale as a ghost. Sam feels the wind from its wings as it soars past him.

And then all Hell breaks loose.

Ravens, suddenly, explode from the fog. Dozens of them — hundreds of them. Their wings are buffeting Sam, feathers brushing his cheek, then slicing it suddenly, razor-sharp; they laugh and dance around him, plucking his hair with their beaks. There are hoof-beats sounding, too, the snorting of beasts — he can see nothing — until suddenly he’s staring down a massive boar, tusks dripping with something too dark for color, strange patterns around its eyes, and —

He knows it, somehow. What he recognizes, he couldn’t say, but this is the demon that picked him up in Reno. This is its true face.

But it isn’t. It’s not like Lucifer’s; it’s not like what Cas has described to him, shuddering, when Sam pressed him once for information on what angels perceive. He remembers taking careful notes as Cas spoke of  _ perversion, _ as Cas spoke of  _ rot, _ and not thinking — refusing to think — about those long endless years in the Cage.

This isn’t so different from what Cas told him; and yet it is different. It’s as different as night from day.

The demons Sam has known are riddled with the airless rot of cruelty — twisted and coiled tight into human form. Human bodies, and human minds. This creature — and it is a creature, though wicked intelligence shines in its eyes — is rotting too, and as it rots, it grows.

Fine mushrooms spring in a line below its jaw. Ghostly flowers bristle behind its ears. Seams of soil run with the grain of its muscles, shimmering with bioluminescence — there’s algae growing on its fur. It’s fascinating, and horrifying — a creature that’s a paean to death. To transformation. To rebirth.

They all are.

There are animals all around him, snorting and whooping to each other. Humanoid figures, too, some with long skeletal willow-like fingers, some with flames for eyes. There are screaming things on wings and massive dragonflies; frogs that cling to the manes of fiery horses. There are hooves that ring when they fall on the stoneless ground, and there are sinuous forms that whisper through the grass, unseen.

Then they’re past him, and it’s only Rowena, sitting proud atop her mount, who remains.

The hound takes one step past the ferryman — two. With each step closer, Sam feels dread and joy coil around his heart; then it stops before him and takes one massive inhale with its nostrils — scenting him. It exhales, and its breath carries the promise of universes, of sea breezes and lavender fields and rotting kelp, of the sun on high mountain grasses, of the darkness of oceans.

Rowena’s eyes blaze and then fade, to a mere glimmer of purple. She looks down at Sam and smiles.

She asks, in a voice that is owls and serpents and hounds: “Will you ride with me?”

Her hand is extended. Sam reaches to grip it.

He says, “Yes.”

\---

How he suddenly finds himself high on the hellhound’s back, he’ll never know. One moment, Rowena’s palm is cool against his; the next, she’s tucked warm to his chest, his hands on her hips, and there’s nothing to do but hold on.

He feels the hound’s great haunches tense. Rowena’s hands are buried in its fur; she’s leaning low to its ears. And it springs.

At once, they’re a howling wind. A black gale, screaming through the air — the cavalcade of demons is below them. And they’re running on water, on waves; they’re placing massive footfalls on the creatures’ backs. The hellhound has claws one moment, hooves the next, then talons — it doesn’t matter. It’s the fiercest of all of them, the wildest, and when it takes the lead again, it pitches its head to the moon and howls.

It’s a haunting sound. There are the screams of hell in it, but there are other things, too. Shouting in languages long forgotten, the roar of campfires. Whale song and wolf song, the scream of a comet through an airless void, the dust of life-stuff falling. Tree-whispering. The rumble of river stones.

As one, the things behind them howl in answer.

Gooseflesh rises all over Sam’s arms. He feels electric — charged with eternity.

_ Is this power? _ It’s death and life at once; the beginning and ending of all things. Rowena shouts, pointing one arm to the sky, and lightning lances across it — and there’s land below them, wisps of fog clinging to farmhouses and valleys. Thunder rattles the air, and lamps far below them click on — terrified faces peer out of windows and vanish.

They’re a storm. They’re more than a storm, weird screams and ghastly apparitions, but as they thunder over the land, hail flies from their hooves. Rain flattens grasses; one great oak splinters and cracks in two. And the people —

Sam can feel them shivering in their beds. Their fear, the things they whisper to themselves and their children:  _ It’s only the rain. _ Cows shift and mutter in their barns; a lamb screams. And Rowena turns her head back to murmur in Sam’s ear — her breath heady against the angle of his jaw, lips brushing his skin — “Welcome to  _ my _ country.”

It’s Scotland.

They wheel over the country houses, land hoofbeats near a castle to make the towers shake. And they’re swinging northward, higher and wilder — great narrow lochs open below them. Rowena shouts something, and her hellhound stoops, arrows, its skin changing into something smooth and slick — and they’re hitting the water’s surface, spearing through the heart of the reflected moon. Great glittering waves fly up around them; the beast lifts its head and roars. And they’re off again.

How long they spend like that — spiraling through the mountains, lancing lightning peak to peak, raging over towns — Sam will never know. It could be an hour; it could be a century. He feels like an animal living inside his skin. He feels more himself than he has ever been.

As they pass, he studies the people in their beds. Some wake up wide-eyed; some press themselves closer to the people they love. Children run to their parents.

Some people run outside — in their boots, in their flannel, in raincoats thrown hastily on. Some of them laugh into the storm.

A few just turn over in their sleep. Their restless movement quiets — as if there has always been a storm inside them. As if to hear it outside is a simple, long-awaited relief.

Sam doesn’t realize how cold and stiff he is — how cramped his muscles are from holding on — until they land.

It’s at the mouth of a great cave by the sea. Black columns of basalt soar up all around them; waves crash. The rest of the Hunt is still airborne, howling, whipping the sea to a frenzy — but Rowena slips from her mount’s back. When she reaches for Sam, he follows.

He nearly falls over, knees buckling, when he lands on the slick stones. Rowena catches him, and he staggers into her, then steadies himself. His senses are alive with the curve of her body — the cling of her gown to her hips.

She reaches up to brush his hair from his face — to tuck it behind his ear.

They’re close — so close — that he feels a physical loss when Rowena turns away. She sweeps an arm toward the scene before them, and it’s otherworldly — rocks gleaming with St. Elmo’s fire.

“Fingal’s cave,” she tells him, voice almost lost in the howling wind. “Your people name places like this after the Devil. My people remember giants — and heroes.”

She drops her arm. And Sam knows, somehow, that what’s next is up to him.

He stretches out a hand, and the sea before them calms to glass. A pathway — with raging waves all around.

Rowena makes a pleased sound low in her throat. She looks up at him sidelong. “Don’t you know to offer a lady your arm?”

\---

The whole time in the cave, they don’t speak.

The water below them holds their weight. Strange creatures swim beneath it — monsters, half-glimpsed in ghostly light.

Basalt towers around them. When Sam reaches to touch it, it’s rough and dry.

There’s no great secret waiting for them. Nothing but the cave, and the end of it; yet still, when they walk back out again, he feels changed. He feels like — something more.

Rowena doesn’t let go of his arm until they’re back at the hellhound’s side. Then she strokes its fur, idly. She turns back to Sam. “Would you like to see your own country?”

Sam nods his head yes.

\---

The flight over the Atlantic seems shorter this time. The hellhound dips its claws in the sea, sending up great flumes of arcing water; the beasts around them dart and dive through the mist. They seem almost playful now, the fury screamed out of them.

The rocky coast of Maine springs suddenly before them. They rise over pine-topped mountains, skim salt marshes, veering south; then inland, over patchworked roads and towns. The Hunt spreads out, swiping at telephone poles, nipping off tree limbs, but Rowena banks away and circles lower.

Sam recognizes the farmhouse before they can see the Impala parked outside.

Then there it is. And there, through the window, Cas and Dean — they’re stretched on a makeshift bed on the floor. Curled tight together, Cas’s arm across Dean’s chest.

They stir, a little, when the wind rattles the house’s old shutters, but they don’t wake. They only shift closer still.

“Ahh,” Rowena murmurs. “Took them long enough.”

She has to turn to speak so he can hear; her shoulderblades shift against Sam’s chest. With her chin tipped up, face angled toward his, they’re almost close enough to kiss.

For a moment they just look at each other. Then Rowena smiles, and turns away again.

She shimmies back, though. A little closer. Sam presses his palm to her waist.

And when they take off this time, it’s not only power he can feel burning inside his veins — not only the strange eternities and weird dream-songs of the Hunt. It’s also humanity, and desire, and grief — they could have had time. They could have had so much more time.

But he doesn’t think he’s afraid of losing himself anymore.

The dawn is speeding behind them. They race over forests, farms, rivers; ribbons of highway and clusters of unquenchable city lights. Sam drops his nose to the angle of Rowena’s neck and feels her shiver against him; he lets his thumb find the shape of her hip.

When they land outside the bunker, it’s so softly that for a moment he can’t believe it’s solid ground.

But Rowena is sliding free of his arms — dismounting. He follows her, and finds he’s not nearly as stiff anymore. His legs have learned, somehow, to sit easy on the back of the beast.

There’s a faint mist clinging to the ground. They walk together around the back of the building. To the witch’s garden.

The flowers are bobbing there in the moonlight, luxuriant as ever, untouched by the autumn chill. Rowena smiles down at them, but she doesn’t reach to touch. Instead, she turns to Sam.

“You have a plan,” she asks, “don’t you?”

He glances at the garden, and back at her. He feels the power in his hands. He nods.

Her smile dimples at the corners. “That’s my boy.”

When he kisses her, it isn’t universes, not the rushing of wind or the curling of vines or the baying of hounds. It’s merely them. The two of them. Warm, and close.

After a while, they pull back. Rowena’s eyes are shining; strangeness is already coiling around her again. The eastern sky is starting to glow with dawn.

“You could come visit me, you know,” she whispers. “That sachet in your pocket — it will act as a token. The ferryman knows it. No need for coins over your eyes, or pomegranate seeds, or any of that. I hear it’s the time of the year for a trip to the underworld.”

Her smile flutters bravely. Sam loves her; doesn’t want to stop touching her. Doesn’t want to let her go.

Instead he smiles back. “Are you calling me Persephone?”

Her smile turns wicked. Her hands circle his hips, and squeeze; she stands on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear.  _ “If the girdle fits.” _

And she’s gone.

\---

Sam wakes up in his own bed.

He feels rested. Not as though he’s been up all night, racing across the globe — he feels calmer, clearer, than he has in months. His hand is tucked in his jeans pocket, the resurrection sachet snug in his palm.

The spell bowl is cold and dusty beside him. The owl skull is gone.

That doesn’t matter; he doesn’t need it. Ingredients are already racing through his head. The spell he needs — the spell  _ he _ needs, to take care of Chuck once and for all —

The wound in his shoulder throbs. Good; he can use that. It can trace Chuck — call him. Bind him.

For everything else, well — that’s what his garden is for.

Sam swings his feet out of bed. He sits for a moment, staring at his hands, and finds he doesn’t fear them. Not right now. Maybe not anymore.

Then he gets up, and goes to deal with God.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter to go! I have a draft done; it'll be posted soon. Certainly before S15 starts up again. :D


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Sam?"_

Sam sits down at the library table — after it’s done. He sits, and he looks at his hands.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there — a few seconds, a few minutes, a few days — before a voice interrupts his reverie.

“Sam?”

Sam jumps.

He didn’t hear the bunker door open and close, but there are Dean and Cas, descending the stairs. Dean’s eyes don’t leave Sam as he reaches the bottom of the steps; he pauses there. Cas puts one hand on his shoulder, and when Dean glances back at him, something eases in his eyes.

Sam pushes his chair back. It scrapes on the library floor. “Hey, uh — hey guys.”

Belatedly, he drops his hands.

“Sammy.” And Dean’s in front of him, suddenly, gesturing him up, a brisk gesture and a drop of his chin.

Slowly, Sam stands.

Dean pulls him into a hug.

It takes him a moment to process what’s happening. His brother’s arms tight around his shoulders, hands firm on his back; and then Sam’s remembering himself. He brings his own arms up; he buries his face in Dean’s shoulder. For several seconds, his brother holds on tight.

When they both pull back, Sam finds that he’s shaky. His body feels fine — good, in fact; for the first time in ages there’s no warning twinge in his shoulder — but his voice wobbles when he asks, “What was that for?”

Dean smacks him, lightly, upside the head. “For going after Chuck on your own, you idiot. Or did you think I wouldn’t figure out what ‘Back fine from Hunt. Gonna try something’ means?”

He uses his fingers to make air quotes. His eyebrows are arched with indignation. Behind him, Cas is wearing his unimpressed squint, lowering their weapons bag to the floor.

Suddenly, the whole image strikes Sam as absurd.

He snorts a laugh — and then he can’t stop laughing. He’s weak with it; his ribs are shaking, gasping for words, which only makes Dean’s eyebrows contort themselves higher. At the same moment, Cas’s go lower. And Sam is absolutely helpless; he collapses back into his chair, eyes streaming, and laughs and laughs until he runs out of air.

Dean is crouching in front of him when he finally gets a grip on himself. “Sam? Sam. Okay, you’re really starting to freak me out here.”

But the laughter has started Sam’s blood moving again; has reminded his body what it means to be warm and alive. To be human. He grins, and runs a hand through his hair.

“I’m fine, Dean. I promise. Here, let me — I gotta show you guys something.”

\---

Dean and Cas shadow him through the bunker’s corridors to the dungeon doors. There, Sam gestures for them to go first. Dean glances up at him, scrutinizing, but Cas swings the door open and leads the way inside.

There’s Chuck, just where Sam left him — chained to the chair.

He looks disheveled and more than a little grumpy. “Oh, shit,” says Dean, drawing up short, but Cas’s eyes narrow. He takes a few steps closer, then stops; they narrow again.

He turns to Sam and says, “He’s human.”

Sam swallows. “Yeah,” he says, “I know.”

Dean glances sharply between them. “Is it — he wasn’t in a  _ vessel, _ was he?”

Slowly, Sam shakes his head. “No, it — that’s God.”

Chuck is glaring at them. He doesn’t open his mouth. He doesn’t say  _ I’m right here, guys; _ he doesn’t make any smarmy remark.

Dean blinks at him. Cas blinks at him.

Cas says, “You stripped him of his power.”

Sam nods.

“Oh, shit,” says Dean again. “You can  _ do  _ that? I mean —  _ you  _ can do that?”

Sam thinks of the pulse of eternity in his veins. Flowing out of Chuck and into him — the knowledge that he could do anything. Be anything. Create from nothingness; split worlds.

He rubs the back of his neck. “Honestly,” he says, “it kind of freaks me out, too.”

But Cas is still frowning. “I don’t understand. Where did you  _ put _ it?”

And that’s the question, isn’t it?

Sam takes a deep breath. He can see another reality — another possible answer. The fork in the road: power blazing through the wound in his shoulder. Rushing through him — a sort of power he couldn’t have dreamed of, not astride a hellhound, not juiced up on gallon after gallon of demon blood; the power over  _ everything. _ He could have snapped his fingers and eliminated monsters from the world. He could have destroyed disease.

In another life, one so close to this one, he might be turning to Cas right now with a smile on his face. He might be asking: “Can’t you tell?”

Instead, he shakes his head and says, “Where it always was — in everything.”

And he explains, slowly. About what he saw on the Hunt: the wildness, the generative force, in all things. The life that comes from death. The chaos of the universe.

“It was never Chuck’s,” he tries to explain. “He played it for thousands of years to his tune, but — it didn’t belong to him.”

It belongs to people. To mushrooms — to  _ atoms. _ Sparks of it live in Dean, and in Cas; sparks of it even live in Sam.

He walks them through it the best that he can. He’s not sure he does a very good job. He is sure that he can’t explain what it felt like, that choice; what it was that lived, ever so briefly, in his hands.

He’s sure he can’t tell them the truth of what stopped him from taking it. Not wisdom, in the end, or humility — not even his sense of the greater good. Only this:  _ I don’t need it. I can already still waves and grow flowers with a thought and a wish. I have my own eyes, my own hands. _

He thinks Rowena will understand.

When he’s finally done talking, Dean turns to stare at Chuck again. “Okay, so — you’re sure he’s powered down? For good? What are we gonna  _ do _ with him?”

Cas swivels to follow his gaze. “He murdered whole worlds for his entertainment. The idea of releasing him — does lack some appeal.”

“What else are we gonna do? Kill him? Keep him locked up down here for the rest of his life?  _ I _ don’t wanna deal with scooping up his shit.”

Sam clears his throat. “I actually, uh — I have an idea. If you guys think it’s a good one.”

\---

Becky picks up her phone on the third ring.

It takes even less time than that to convince her to file a police report. Sam’s already doctored the casino’s security cam footage — removed every trace of his own presence, or of anything supernatural. There’s only Chuck, abducting a family and two minors across state lines.

“Oh,” says Becky, sweetly, a little savagely, “if you say he’s human, I believe you. And I’d be  _ glad _ to see that fucker rot in jail.”

Sam laughs. “How are you and the family? Recovering okay?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. “It’s a lot to deal with. But we’ll muddle through. What’s been more of a headache is my fic readers — believe me, they were  _ not _ happy with that ending I posted out of the blue.”

“You should write them a different one,” Sam tells her. “Set the story straight.”

This time, there’s a longer moment of silence on the other end of the line. Then: “Oh, gosh,” Becky says. “Sam, really — you wouldn’t mind?”

_ Right. The other ending will be the real one. _ Sam winces, but when he opens his mouth to answer, he finds that — he doesn’t, really. Mind.

\---

It takes the FBI — the real FBI — about two days to track Chuck down, after Dean and Cas and Sam set him loose at the Nevada border. “You’d really think he’d learn a thing or two about running from the law,” Dean comments. “Watching us all these years.”

They watch the trial every night on TV. Dean makes the popcorn.

\---

Cas moves into Dean’s room with very little fanfare. They start sharing the couch on movie nights, Cas’s hand looped comfortably around Dean’s hip. Sometimes Dean shoots Sam  _ don’t-you-dare-comment _ type looks, but Sam wasn’t going to anyway. He only grins and waggles his eyebrows at his brother out of form.

Besides, on the nights when his heart feels restless in his chest, when his hands and his lips long for something — he has his own place to go.

He takes Rowena’s resurrection sachet out of his bedside drawer those nights. He curls it in his fingers; tucks it under his pillow, sometimes. Sometimes he holds it close to his face.

Then he lights a candle for peaceful sleeping, and closes his eyes, and dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit we're done! Thank you for joining me on this ride. This fic was conceived almost a year ago after 15.03 aired and took me... somewhat longer than expected. Oh dear.
> 
> Anyway now it is almost the eve of Season 15, Part 2, and I could not be more excited to see what the show has in store. It presumably won't be anything like this. And that's awesome.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! If you're so inclined, you can reblog this fic on [tumblr](https://gravelghosts.tumblr.com/post/627704020931330048/revivere-spn-fic-samrowena-deancas-complete).


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